One of IKEA’s most recent ads for Thailand shows a man and a woman walking into an IKEA store, when she’s so shocked by what she sees that she forgets to hide the fact that she’s transgender. Activists are not amused.
The Thai Transgender Alliance has written an open
letter to IKEA demanding further explanations for the ad and a public apology as well.
You can see the commercial above.
Clearly, the idea behind it (because of the voice and that final scene in which the woman is doing the heavy lifting) is that she was born as a man and had gender reassignment surgery.
It’s not the humor that’s offensive, the activists are saying, but rather the fact that the ad implies that all transgenders are “deceitful.”
“The MTF transgender/transwoman character is openly mocked as being ‘deceitful.’ The transgender content of the advertisement is negative and stereotypical in nature, perpetuating misunderstanding transgenderism as human sexuality for ‘deceitful and deviant lifestyle’,” the Alliance says.
So far, no word from IKEA.
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