Earlier this year, Minnesota Wild defenseman Jon Merrill, in collaboration with the NHL Player Inclusion Coalition, announced the start of Hockey’s Beauty Club, an initiative that aims to help combat bullying in the hockey community.
He describes a “beauty” as someone who does something extraordinary on or off the ice, and calls an ally to a marginalized group a “top-tier beauty.”
Merrill and the club host chapter meetings and hand out bag tags that say “No Hate, Just Beauties” and offer a support email manned by Merrill, his wife Jess, and Twin Cities Pride executive director Andi Otto.
“To have the bag tag on your bag, to walk into the rink, I think it shows somebody on your team that person’s a beauty. That person’s got my back,” Merrill said in a press release. “He, she or they are going to stand up for me. The bag tag comes with some responsibility. When you wear that bag tag, you’re opening yourself up to be a sounding board for those people that are struggling.”
Merrill himself has long been an ally of the LGBTQ+ community: He’s manned the Wild float in the Twin Cities Pride parade and officiated various LGBQT+ hockey games while sporting a tutu. The blue-liner has even worked other pride events in full drag.
“Hockey is a sport that teaches us so many great life lessons about working together as a team,” the 33-year-old Merrill said. “I genuinely believe we’re creating better human beings because of this game of hockey. So, if we continue to break down barriers that hockey players are one specific mold, or that you have to be a certain type of person or look a certain way or be a certain thing to be a hockey player, we’re going to be better for it as a sport and as humans.”
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