Trans model Stav Strashko
THE GUERRILLA ANGEL REPORT — Exploitation or savvy marketing? We’ve had this ruckus before. If done wrong, we’re stereotyped. If done right, a heck of a lot of positive publicity for us.
This time it’s Toyota. They’re coming out with an all-new Corolla. The ad created for the campaign apparently challenges the Corolla’s plain Jane image. The ad is only going to be shown in some markets — not the United States.
In the ad, a model struts by the car, removes a jacket and is then shown topless. Viewers do not know the model is androgynous until near the end of the commercial.
The model is 19-year-old, born in the Ukraine, Stav Strashko. Now stay with me closely folks, I’m not going have a pronoun debate about this — he identifies himself transgender and he identifies as male. But clearly he is androgynous. This is just about all the information I know at this time.
I’m thinking the ad is ok. Shocking? Yes. Positive PR for trans people? Yes. Exploitation? Not so much.
So, thumbs up or thumbs down on the ad campaign?
Stav Strashko models for Toyota
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zVwJrAr7GkY&feature=player_embedded
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Categories: Transgender, Transsexual, Trans
LEXIE CANNES STATE OF TRANS 
I have already seen it, and I don’t fault Stav Strashko. His identity is of his choosing. Noone else has the right to label him. That being said, my opinion is it is exploitative and sensationalistic. How does having an androgenous model sell cars? and I do not see how this AD can be positive for the trans, or gender vairiant communities. Again, not to critisize Stav, but Andrej Pecjak has been modeling a while now and has done nothing sensationalistic, or crassly commercialized. Andrej is beautiful and a professional.
I don’t care !!!!!! if he or she i androgynous, transgendered , transsexual or a cross dresser as long as they PRESENT in beauty and in with feminine class, I don’t care, we deserve to be respected and thats all that matters to me
I wonder when we talk about exploitation in such marketing ploys, if we actually get the perspective the right way around. Is it the models who are being exploited? Or is it we, the general public?
I think, perhaps as do you Lexie, that this ad is edgy and innovative. It does not suggest anything is any more real than another. It does suggest not everything need be as it seems. That it does not present any particular gender preference is to my thinking a positive.
Maybe we the general public, can be encouraged not think of their new model Corolla as a man’s car or a lady’s car but rather just what it actually is ….
a car!
tho i get it that toyota and others use any currently ‘in the news’ sort of image to sell and make billions, …i’m still glad to see gender variance depicted in a fair way. hope this was done that way
Stav doesn’t identify as transgender. He’s said in interviews that he’s male, and he likes the way he is.
Well from what I have seen, she is a great representative of the trans community, she gets peoples attention, thats enough for her to sell cars so whats the big deal ! I am jealous, most of us only dream of looking as hot as she is ! I am proud of her !