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2012Beautiful Andrej
More mainstream coverage and acceptance of the blurring of gender lines…
Andrej Pejic is the only person who can walk down top fashion runways as either a man or a woman. People seem to accept that.
The Washington Post did a feature on him on February 10th. How much more mainstream can you get?
Oh, but FYI, Andrej is not transgender. So says the Washington Post:
While he often wears women’s clothing and doesn’t mind when people mistake him for a girl, he has no desire to actually become one. Androgyny and cross-dressing do not make him transgendered — for that, he would have to identify as the opposite sex. Pejic still identifies as a man.
He told New York Magazine: “I know people want me to sort of defend myself, to sit here and be like, ‘I’m a boy, but I wear makeup sometimes.’ But, you know, to me, it doesn’t really matter. I don’t really have that sort of strong gender identity — I identify as what I am. The fact that people are using it for creative or marketing purposes, it’s just kind of like having a skill and using it to earn money.”
Beautiful, Andrej!
I wonder if there is any way I could get my mind around that philosophy for myself? I have tried different flavors of it and none have worked, but maybe this’ll be like discovering chocolate…
I’ll let you know…
Jamie
Maybe you’re just too young to remember her, but Teri Toye was doing what Andrej is doing back in the 80’s.
Look her up on Google or YouTube.
Andrej is just a “flavor of the month” in the gay man’s world of fashion design and marketing.
Teri Toye was the real thing.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PApXR5Kb4MM
cdjanie
Interesting, and thanks for the link. But I don’t see why Terri is real and Andrej is not. Seems the same to me.
Jamie
Because Andrej is admittedly a “gay man,” not transgendered. In other words, he’s really just a drag queen that found a better way to make money at it than working a club or being RuPaul’s Drag Race.
Teri Toye is today living as a woman.
cdjanie
Ooohh, I am not sure I agree with that… A gay man who dresses as a woman is not a drag queen in my book; a drag queen is often a gay man, but always someone who does a caricature of women. I don’t think that can be said of Andrej. Nor, by the way, has he said he is gay – at least according to the articles I have read.
But, it doesn’t matter. I don’t see how his sexual orientation, or whether he lives as a man, a woman or both makes him more or less of “the real deal.” I guess it depends on what you consider “the deal” to be.
The real deal here to me is the blurring of gender lines, the man who can be a woman also – or perhaps we are not even sure what his true gender is, or maybe he leads us to question exactly what gender is, in fact. In this Andrej is the real deal, not Teri.
Jamie
Okay…. I’m starting to remember now why I get so upset when I start dealing with this branch of the internet; the one that creates their own unique blend of reality, and then manages to ignore everything that doesn’t fit into it.
If you think drag queens only do carictures of women, then you need to get out and meet more drag queens 🙂