In Gender Conflicts we study gender roles, from how they are constructed to their dismantling. We have focused on the nebulousness of gender and the way people are eager to consign an individual to a certain gender.

On the other hand, people appear to be as fascinated by gender flexibility as they seem to be uneasy about it. In the case of model Andrej Pejic, unclear sex appears to work to his advantage. First appearing in Australia, Andrej is now 19th of the top 50 male models in the world.

I want to talk about him because the nature of his job is highly visible, and he draws different reactions from people, who despite any protest cannot deny his chameleonlike ability to wear both female and male attire strikingly well.

When he first signed up at a modeling agency in his hometown Melbourne, the agency was eager to have him and at the same time told him it would be difficult for him, since he was "too beautiful to be an obvious choice for men’s campaigns, but...was not actually a woman" ("The Prettiest Boy in the World," New York Magazine).

He didn't become wildly popular with a coveted image until Carine Roitfeld, then editor-in-chief of French Vogue, decided to dress him as a woman for an editorial shoot. Since then he has gone on to model at numerous shows and shoots, until he is famou

s enough in Australia that he "has to wear sunglasses to go outside" ("The Prettiest Boy in the World").

Andrej himself states that he never thought of himself as exclusively male, yet also did not consider himself only female. He claims "At this point, I'm happy with the situation as it is."

At the same time, Andrej's androgyny hasn't been embraced by all. Barnes and Noble ordered copies of the magazine with the image of him walking bare-chested to be wrapped in opaque plastic, lest readers think he was a woman. Another magazine had to apologize for referring to him as an "it." Nevertheless, the controversy served to augment his career.

I want to point him out to the class, because even though fashion is a closed-off world to most of us, it is an image-driven world. Gender to me has a lot to do with the visible and obvious. The visible explains the discomfiture caused by this sort of image.

The image has shock value because clearly it is a man with all features masculine who is late in pregnancy. Contrast with this image:

This is Amanda Lepore, a famous transsexual who appeared for M.A.C. cosmetics and more advertising. Unlike the man in the preceding image, Amanda pregnant would not generate the same reaction.

Image has a lot to do with how we perceive gender, because we interpret gender depending largely on our vision.

It is interesting to consider Andrej because he is a model whose career is based on having an unclear sex. In spite of studying mainly people who are ostracized or demonized for that characteristic, there exist people who bridge the gender gap in a way attractive to the public, as Andrej's ranking of 19 proves.