Often, we talk about “beauty standards” as a single set of rules, as though they can be internalized and followed the way one might follow the rules of grammar or mathematics. Beauty standards have very real consequences for those who break them and also those who don’t, and they are so pervasive as to seem universal. But they aren’t universal.
Take, for example, the context of the fashion industry. Granted, there are plenty of harmful aspects of consumerism and misogyny in fashion in general. Still, fashion is, purportedly, an art that pushes boundaries, even if it has inherited the unfortunate boundaries of the society of which it is a part. This is an essay in itself. What is interesting for the purposes of this post is how the beauty standards for fashion models differ from those for the average person in a given culture. The purpose of fashion is to push boundaries, and so it continually shapes the beauty standards and trends for average people and then changes them.
Similarly, models are not held to the same set of standards. Successful models have a certain set of common characteristics (tall, thin), as well as something that makes them “stand out”: a sharp nose, strong brow, angular jaw line. At the same time, the desire for models who are tall and thin has necessarily led to an increase in models with androgynous bodies. Perhaps the most popular androgynous model at the moment is Andrej Pejic, who in one season walked five men’s shows and four women’s shows.
His body seems to be proof that even biology is not dichotomous. One would expect this to be more threatening, yet Andrej reports a happy, carefree childhood. His mother is doting, his brother is supportive, and the hardest part of his teenage years, he says, was figuring out who he was. The freedom that he seems to have felt from pressure to look or act a certain way, the ability to decide for himself who he wanted to be, is remarkable. The following interview shows him to be level-headed and surprisingly unaffected by his sudden success as a model.
In the context of fashion, androgyny seems more acceptable, relatively speaking. What do you think makes this the case? Is this a positive move, or does it just reflect a fetishization of “unusual” bodies?
Unruly Bodies 
I found this interview to be particularly interesting because while it is about Andrej and his gender presentation, it specifically focuses on his gender in relation to the economic market, making his androgynous performance of gender a form of capital that is marketable. Even he states that following the economic collapse designers choose him because he can do both men and women’s fashion. Furthermore, it is mentioned multiple times how his look is “very good for [his] career.”
In addition, his gender is referred to as a “trend.” Designer Paul Smith states, “The whole androgynous look is very relevant..Why it happens? Who knows.” I found this simplification of gender, particularly to benefit that of the capital market, to be extremely off-putting.
At the same time, I think this does demonstrate a step towards a more fluid perception of gender. This can be seen in the language used to refer to and describe Andrej. One designer says that he possesses “that little something special that you just can’t put your finger on.” Andrej’s mother responds to Andrej modeling James Paul Gaultier’s hot couture line by saying, “He’s the most beautiful girl I’ll ever see in a wedding dress.” Through this language usage in itself, the strict boundaries of the gender binary are crossed and blurred. However, can this truly be seen as progress or is this merely the objectification and commodification of gender nonconformity?
All good points. I decided to focus on how he was being perceived, but the consumerist and capitalist aspects can’t be ignored either. Of course, these things overlap, as in the case of his gender being referred to as a “trend.”
The thing about this that I think suggests progress is that, at least in the interviews I’ve seen, he doesn’t report ever feeling conflicted about his gender. Either he has a very strong sense of gender identity, or he grew up in a very accepting environment. It seems to be a little of both.
Still, although he is relatively accepted in most contexts, there have been a few controversies (FHM, Dossier, if you’re curious). FHM, for example, is less about art and fashion, and they wrote some awful things about him (they even referred to him as a “thing”) in a weird, backhanded way. They described him as a “clothes-hanger,” which speaks directly to the commodification you pointed out. There are even worse, transphobic things in the short paragraph that they published, but I don’t recommend reading them unless you want to hate people.
(I wrote about these controversies in my original post, but decided not to add them back in because it was already too long. There’s a lot more that I could write about this.)