Sandy’s heroes get the Vogue treatment

Thu, 17 Jan 2013 18:34:00 +0000

In the new issue of Vogue, Annie Leibovitz shoots key responders to Hurricane Sandy — alongside some of the top models in the industry, dressed in designer togs. There are the models, reclining at the Lexington Avenue Armory while National Guardsmen lift crates of food; there they are pulling just a bit of focus from the neonatal nurses of Bellevue. Ms. Leibovitz even road a Coast Guard response boat in order to nail her shot of three sylphlike models rising from the sea on a military vessel.

Toyota’s gender-bending win

Thu, 23 Aug 2012 20:12:00 +0000

It's not the first time a beautiful, bikini-clad model has been used to sell a car. But this one's a little different.

In a new Japanese Toyota ad, the long-haired 19-year-old Ukrainian Stav Strashko struts toward a car as the camera lovingly follows the model's perfect, red bikini-bottomed butt. A jacket is seductively shed. And then Strashko turns around to reveal – she's a man, baby! Yup, that bare chest is flat, but the bulge in the bikini bottom is not.

It's a novel twist on the old hot chick advertising trope, and while it may have exactly zero to do with why you should buy a car, it has everything to do with the changing way gender is portrayed in advertising. Strashko is the surprise within the ad but, thankfully, he isn't the punch line of it. This isn't some transphobic BS trying to sell the notion of what makes a "real" woman (apparently it's menstrual blood) or some hardy-har-har challenge to distinguish the "stallions from the mares" or a joke about how gender identity is something one whimsically takes on and then regrets. In a making-of clip, Strashko says proudly, "I can't put it in words how excited I am about this commercial and everything I experienced here."

Salon.com > Models

Sandy’s heroes get the Vogue treatment

Toyota’s gender-bending win