GENDER DAYS: andrej pejic.

... who is andrej pejic?

a (role) model and one of my latest idols. why? ... because he is a very controversal person indeed. he is courageous and modern. why? he's a model ... but he is a very special model - he is the only person modeling for men AND women's fashion (!). people are fascinated because he actually can look like a 'real' woman or a man (with slightly feminine characteristics).

now there are people who say, that he is not a 'real' man.

but there is a question: ... what is a man, actually? and what is a woman?

he stands for the abolition of the traditional gender distribution, a a step in the right direction, which i absolutely appreciate - during my university years i fiddled with cultural studies, gender studies and feminism and thus i learned, that there are no differences between the sexes. we have learned that there are only two sexes, male and female, and that everything else is factitious. but this is a discrimination against all of those who differ from this learned naturalness. male and female are constructed through society, their values, their traditions. culture is something in which we are born into. so many things we learn are constructed, not naturally given by nature. but we take them for granted. male and female are filled with social meanings, which musn't actually be correct. in fact, there are NO biological aspects which make men and women differ from each other - expect for the fact that women have a vagina and can bear children and men have a penis. it is only societal pressure and traditions which want to make us fit into characteristics or identities which society represents as 'the real man' or 'the real woman'. sex is a biological term which states that males have male genitals, females have female genitals. but if you like high heels, dresses, automobiles or modern technology it doesn't tell if you're female or male. those characteristics which society fills into sexual terms is called 'gender'. gender is a term, which expresses the societal and artificial construction of male or female or what we think those words should express. the real man or the real woman are stereotypes. the real woman is a patriarchial construction which needs to be reconsidered. and, as i said in the beginning, there is not only male and female, but lots of transgenders in between.

gender is artificially produced within a binary society, all those differences between men and women just do not exist at all. 

body and mind of men and women alike are shaped through society. identity is artificially constructed.

i had to reconsider the whole of my thoughts through those university years. and i believe that lots of people would be well advised if they also fiddle with all those texts and controversities. it would open their minds and souls.

i'm open to anyone who is courageous enough to break through old traditions and norms. andrej pejic is a person like this.

in an interview he said, that he had proclivity for women's dresses and make up when he was a child, which also didn't cause a stir because he was a child. his mum and dad allowed him to dress just as he wanted. but when he became older, the discriminations began. when he became a teen, he realized that he was different. this binary society tried to make him into a homogeneous young man, becoming 'the real man', tried to make him fit into this binary society. if he wanted to fit, he couldn't any longer behave or dress or think as he wanted. 

but they didn't succeed.

andrej pejic didn't bow his head to uniformity and homogeneity - and now he is one of the hottest models of our time. a human being standing for the modernisation of old stereotypes and for a new inflamation of the gender discussion. a human being, standing for modernity.

now he is also modeling for the new zign collection, which is available at the zalando online store. in this spot he wears different shoes as a woman, and at the end one as a man. FHM, a magazine for men, also voted him onto place 98 of 100 of the sexiest women of the world.

an inspiring person.