The LGBT community celebrated Tuesday when Vogue released its first-ever profile of an openly transgender man posing as a woman.
Despite being born a boy, Andreja Pejic, 26, now identifies as a woman, having recently undergone surgery to complete the illusion. The article, written by columnist Alice Gregory, emphasized the once-loaded term "gender-reassignment surgery" has since been replaced by the new "gender-confirmation surgery" in order to avoid hurting people's feelings.
Born in Bosnia-Herzegovina at the start of the Bosnian War, Pejic spent his early years in a refugee camp along with his recently divorced mother, grandmother, and brother before emigrating to Melbourne, Australia in 1999. According to Pejic, "feminine styles of speech, gait, and gesture" came naturally to him from an early age, but he had to hide it in order to avoid bullying. Once puberty hit, however, Pejic feared that increasingly male features would break his illusions of being a woman, so he underwent puberty suppression therapy by taking hormones. He first took them in secret before doing it openly after getting his "mother's blessing."
"I wanted to stop puberty in its early tracks," he told Vogue. "I was worried about my feet being too big, my hands being too big, my jawline being too strong."
At age 16, Pejic got his start in modeling after being discovered by a scout while working at a Melbourne McDonalds. The scout apparently didn't know if he was a boy or a girl, only that he "looked like a model." Starting out as an androgynous model, Pejic spent his early modeling career walking in both men and women's shows, something that columnist Alice Gregory said "made people see things from a new perspective."
"There are just more categories now," said Pejic. "It’s good. We’re finally figuring out that gender and sexuality are more complicated."
Though Pejic has generally been well received in the fashion community, he admitted that his decision to get "gender-confirmation surgery" did raise a few eyebrows, with industry agents saying he would lose his "specialness" and become one of the "loads of pretty girls out there." He defied them all, and because Vogue seems to evidence the same aching desire to get on the new "transwagon" all the big kids are raving about, he now gets a full profile in a major publication referring to he as she for more than 20 paragraphs. Not one sentence mentions the scientific reality that Pejic has both an X and Y chromosome—something that can never be altered.
Gregory concludes her article by predictably citing all the examples of how far society has come with accepting "gender fluidity," throwing out famous transgender names like Laverne Cox and mentioning that Justin Bieber "is known to buy women's jeans." Her article's theme can be summed up with a quote she shared from Proenza Schouler cofounder Lazaro Hernandez, who said, "Nobody cares anymore. The distinction between man and woman is disappearing, aesthetically at least. . . . As a designer, you reflect the culture, and this is a big facet of our culture right now."
