Andrej Pejic in New York Mag: My Gender Is Open to Interpretation

If he weren’t a man, he’d probably be the most beautiful woman in fashion right now. Andrej Pejic, the 19-year-old Serbian-born male model who reinvented the whole concept of androgyny, is featured in the latest issue of New York Magazine – and the interview sheds some light into the life of “the prettiest boy in the world.”

Since breaking into the spotlight some time ago, when Vogue put him on its pages in women’s clothes even though, by all accounts, he is a man, Andrej has become the industry’s darling, as well as one of its most controversial figures.

While the world at large is still having serious trouble putting Andrej in one box or another – is he a boy pretending to be a girl, or a girl who occasionally likes to dress like a boy? – he doesn’t fret over it.

His gender, he tells NY Mag, is entirely a matter of perception and, at the same time, open to whatever artistic interpretation one desires.

He doesn’t consider himself a he or a she; he is just Andrej.

“My whole life is controversy. What can I do? I’m like Britney Spears!” he jokes in the interview.

“When I started experimenting, it was to make myself feel happy, to look in the mirror and be satisfied. I never did drag or anything like that. It was always that I wanted to be pretty, to look beautiful, as a girl would want to,” he says.

He’s talking about the years after his 13th birthday, when he decided he no longer wanted to hide or, even worse in his perspective, strain to be (and dress) as society would have him to.

As far as Andrej is concerned, he doesn’t believe in the classic definitions of gender. It’s not that he’s pushing them by being himself – he’s altogether sidestepping them to create a new gender which, so far, only has him as the most known representative.

“In this society, if a man is called a woman, that’s the biggest insult he could get. Is that because women are considered something less?” Andrej muses.

“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 model says.

“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,” he adds.

For the full interview with Andrej Pejic, see the New York Mag issue here.