Gender-bending model says discipline is the key to his success

Sep 20, 2011 18:41 GMT  ·  By

Gender-bending beauty Andrej Pejic can just as well model men’s clothes as he can walk down the catwalk in women’s haute couture. While he’s definitely paid more for the latter job, it doesn’t come without some sacrifice on his part.

In a new interview with Grazia magazine cited by the Daily Mail, the model, who is now one of the most sought after models in the world, both male and female, says discipline is the key to his success.

He may be beautiful by nature, but he certainly can’t stay in model shape without it, he explains.

“I could be a passing trend,” he tells the magazine. As such, he’s making sure he does whatever he can to hold on to his moment in the spotlight.

This also includes sticking to a strict diet, which enables him to have the ideal body for fashion designers: one that can wear both men and women’s clothes.

“Let’s be honest. You can’t eat much if you want to do this. To do womenswear I have to be disciplined. My waist has gone from 29 to 25 inches, my hips are 35 inches,” Andrej explains, adding that the “discipline” took some time getting used to.

Moreover, while fashion designers and most of the public (and the media) have been very supportive of him so far, Andrej also has to face some negativity from his fellow models – the women, in particular.

“I’m not sure how the girls feel about me. They’re very competitive,” he says, diplomatically avoiding saying out loud that they resent him for stealing from them what they consider to be theirs.

While on the topic of modeling for both sexes and the fuss that is being made around him, Pejic recently told New York Magazine that he didn’t necessarily identify as male or female, as we also informed you.

Instead, he just preferred to think of himself as simply “Andrej.”

“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,” he said.