GENDERQUEER FASHION MODELS AND THEIR REPRESENTATIONS OF GENDER IN VISUAL CULTURE.
Anna Germaine Hickey
BCI Visual Art, Hons.
Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy (Fashion)
School of Design
Queensland University of Technology
2019
Keywords
Fashion models
Cultural intermediaries
Fashion
Gender
Queer
Genderqueer fashion models
Transgender fashion models
Andreja Pejić
Casey Legler
Hari Nef
Richie Shazam Khan
Genderqueer fashion models and their representations of gender in visual culture. i
Abstract
The rise and success of genderqueer fashion models in the twenty- first century indicates wider sociopolitical movements that promote equality for members of genderqueer communities. Many high-profile genderqueer fashion models build their careers on their gender identity and are vocal on gender rights issues, which gives them a political identity. However, these models also embody key tensions in contemporary gender discourse, as their queer identities are both made visible and commodified through fashion modelling. For example, while their queer identities challenge persistent associations between cisnormative femininity and beauty, these models have also been criticised for reinforcing heteronormative beauty ideals. And while including genderqueer fashion models is widely interpreted as heralding a more socially inclusive industry, their presence might also be read as a passing trend.
Drawing on Judith Butler’s ([1990] 1999) notion of ‘troubling gender’ and Pierre Bourdieu’s (1984) notion of ‘cultural intermediation’, this project examines the contemporary genderqueer fashion model by analysing fashion editorials, commercial endorsements, artistic outputs and journalistic coverage. Specifically, it focuses on the ways in which four models—Andreja Pejić, Hari Nef, Casey Legler and Richie Shazam
Khan—construct and communicate contemporary notions of gender via their work in the fashion-modelling industry. This project argues that
Genderqueer fashion models and their representations of gender in visual culture. ii
genderqueer fashion models make contemporary ideas of gender visible, offering a new aesthetic language of gender and validating gender nonconformity in visual culture. In addition, the project proposes that genderqueer fashion models make their diverse gender identities culturally and economically valuable as they become increasingly visible in mainstream channels of visual culture, thus contributing to the wider discourse of gender politics. An interrogation of how ‘queer’ gender, supposedly an inclusive, emancipatory concept against cisnormative gender, also interplays with race and ethnicity, class/social status, educational level, or even the subjects’ bodily capital and attention capital in the context of the fashion modelling industry, forms part of the theoretical contribution of this research.
Genderqueer fashion models and their representations of gender in visual culture. iii
Contents
Keywords ...... i Abstract ...... ii Contents ...... iv List of Figures ...... vii List of Tables ...... x Glossary of Terms and Abbreviations ...... xi Statement of Original Authorship ...... xviii Acknowledgements ...... xix A Note on Language ...... xx Chapter 1: Introduction ...... 1 Research Question ...... 5 Aims………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….… 9 Framing the genderqueer fashion model ...... 10 Studying images of fashion ...... 16 Gap in Literature and Significance of Research ...... 20 Limitations ...... 21 Chapter 2: Methodology ...... 25 Case Study Methodology ...... 26 Interpretive Analysis ...... 30 Data Selection ...... 36 Internet-Mediated Research ...... 38 Case Study Structure ...... 44 Conclusion ...... 45 Chapter 3: Gender and the Fashion Model in History ...... 47 Gender and the Fashion Model ...... 48 Modelling Masculinity ...... 62 The Fashion Model at the End of the Twentieth Century ...... 66 A Conceptual Shift Away from the Gender Binary ...... 72 Queer Theory ...... 79 The Contemporary Fashion Model Emerges ...... 82 Conclusion ...... 86 Chapter 4: The Contemporary and Genderqueer Fashion Model ...... 88 The Genderqueer Fashion Model Emerges ...... 89
Genderqueer fashion models and their representations of gender in visual culture. iv
Celebrity Culture ...... 90 Fashion Models as Cultural Intermediaries ...... 93 The Conditions of Genderqueer Fashion Models’ Visibility ...... 103 Cultural whiteness ...... 104 The privileged liberal gaze ...... 108 Can there really be ‘post-gender’ performances? ...... 112 Conclusion ...... 120 Chapter 5: Andreja Pejić ...... 123 Troubling Gender ...... 128 Performing the norms: Femininity ...... 128 Performing the norms: Masculinity ...... 132 Performing ambiguity ...... 135 Settling in to femininity as a womenswear model ...... 151 Pejić as Cultural Intermediary: Pre-Transition ...... 154 Pejić as Cultural Intermediary: Post-Transition ...... 163 Conclusion ...... 177 Chapter 6: Casey Legler ...... 184 Troubling Gender ...... 187 Performing as a male model ...... 188 Performing non-normative femininity ...... 197 Collective troubling ...... 208 Legler as Cultural Intermediary ...... 217 Conclusion ...... 230 Chapter 7: Hari Nef ...... 232 Troubling Gender ...... 234 Troubling gender through fluid aesthetics ...... 235 Using the body + collective troubling ...... 238 Normative femininity as troubling ...... 240 Nef as Cultural Intermediary ...... 247 Cultural mediation through creative works and collaborations ...... 256 Conclusion ...... 261 Chapter 8: Richie Shazam Khan ...... 263 Troubling Gender ...... 265 Khan as Cultural Intermediary ...... 278 Conclusion ...... 284 Chapter 9: Discussion and Conclusion ...... 287 Findings ...... 292 Intersectionality ...... 296 Transgender models and the reinforcement of binary aesthetics ...... 300 Trend or incremental change in advanced capitalism ...... 302 Contribution to Knowledge ...... 305
Genderqueer fashion models and their representations of gender in visual culture. v
Conclusion ...... 307 Future research ...... 308 Bibliography ...... 311 Appendices ...... 324 Appendix A : “The right face at the right time” i-D online 2014, photographed by Daniel Jackson, stylist Alistair McKimm ...... 324 Appendix B : “Chanel” editorial in Exit Magazine Fall/Winter 2015, photographed by Santiago and Mauricio Sierra, fashion editor and stylist Michaela Dosamantes ...... 331 Appendix C : Hari Nef and Andres Velencoso in “Honeymoon”, CANDY Magazine January 2017,photographed by Sebastian Faena, fashion editor and stylist Sofia Achaval ...... 335
Genderqueer fashion models and their representations of gender in visual culture. vi
List of Figures
Figure 1.1: (top left) Andreja Pejić for Vogue Australia April 2018 ...... 8 Figure 1.2: (top right) Casey Legler for Numero Homme Spring/Summer 2018 ...... 8 Figure 1.3: (bottom left) Hari Nef for CANDY Magazine #10 2017 ...... 8 Figure 1.4: (bottom right) Richie Shazam Khan for Dazed Digital February 2016 ...... 8 Figure 3.1: Edward Steichen (American, 1879‒1973), Marion Morehouse in Madeleine Cheruit (French, 1887‒1936). Vogue 1 May 1927 ...... 55 Figure 3.2: Irving Penn (American, b.1917) The twelve most photographed models Vogue 1 May 1947; Meg Mundy, Marilyn Ambrose, Helen Bennett, Dana Jenney, Betty Mclauchlen, Lisa Fonssagrives, Lily Carlson, Dorian Leigh, Andrea Johnson, Elizabeth Gibbons, Kay Hernan and Muriel Maxwell ...... 58 Figure 3.3: Twiggy in Yves Saint Laurent for Vogue April 1967, shot by Bert Stern (American, b. 1929) ...... 59 Figure 3.4: Versace Spring 1994 campaign, shot by Richard Avedon, featuring Christy Turlington, Nadja Auermann, Cindy Crawford, Stephanie Seymour and Claudia Schiffer .... 67 Figure 3.5: Calvin Klein CK one fragrance advertising campaign, Steven Meisel 1994 ...... 70 Figure 3.6: Gisele Bündchen in the 2005 Victoria’s Secret show ...... 84 Figure 5.1: Pejić in Jean Paul Gaultier Spring 2012 Couture show, Look 41 ...... 130 Figure 5.2: HEMA advertisement 2011 for ‘Mega Push-Up Bra’ ...... 131 Figure 5.3: Pejić in “Things are going to change” i-D November 2010, photographed by Thomas Lohr ...... 135 Figure 5.4: “Gold digger” in Dazed & Confused April 2011 photographed by Anthony Maule, styled by Robbie Spencer ...... 139 Figure 5.5: Cover of Dossier Magazine May 2011, photographed by Collier Shorr ...... 141 Figure 5.6: Jean Paul Gaultier Fall 2011 menswear, Look 2, 25, 44 ...... 144 Figure 5.7: Jean Paul Gaultier Spring 2011 Couture ...... 145 Figure 5.8: Images from “Victor/Victoria” in Elle Serbia January 2013, photographed by Dusan Reljin, styled by Lauren Bensky ...... 147 Figure 5.9: Images from Nathan Paul Swimwear campaign, Summer 2012/2013 ...... 149 Figure 5.10: Andreja Pejić in Giles Deacon Fall 2015 show, Look 4/31 ...... 152 Figure 5.11: “Andreja Pejić: All about that girl”, i-D 2015, photographed by Cass Bird ...... 169 Figure 5.12: Cover of GQ Portugal March 2017, photographed by Branislav Simoncik ...... 172 Figure 6.1: Casey Legler photographed by Julian Broad for Observer Magazine March 2013189 Figure 6.2: All Saints Spring 2013 “Portraits of a collection” campaign, photographed by Roger Rich ...... 189 Figure 6.3: Michael Bastian Fall 2013, Look 30/34 ...... 190 Figure 6.4: Excerpts from “Out with the boys” featuring Candice Swanepoel, Casey Legler and Erika Linder, photographed by Cass Bird, published in Muse 2012 ...... 192
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Figure 6.5: Linder, Legler and Swanepoel (left to right) in “Out with the boys”, photographed by Cass Bird, published in Muse 2012 ...... 193 Figure 6.6: Casey Legler for Diesel, F/W 2013, photographed by Inez and Vinoodh ...... 196 Figure 6.7: Legler in “YSL”, Vogue Italia July 2017, photographed by Craig McDean ...... 199 Figure 6.8: Tahnee Atkinson in THE UPSIDE’S “Be you” campaign ...... 201 Figure 6.9: Legler in “Be you” 2015 campaign, THE UPSIDE, photographed by Jez Smith .. 201 Figure 6.10: Legler in “Be you” 2015 campaign, THE UPSIDE, photographed by Jez Smith 201 Figure 6.11: Legler in “Be you” 2015 campaign, THE UPSIDE, photographed by Jez Smith 202 Figure 6.12: Casey Legler in “Double vision” for FourTwoNine Magazine 2013, photographed by Michael Donovan ...... 204 Figure 6.13: Casey Legler and Jonjon Battles in “Double vision” for FourTwoNine magazine 2013, photographed by Michael Donovan ...... 205 Figure 6.14: Casey Legler and Jonjon Battles in “Double vision” for FourTwoNine magazine 2013, photographed by Michael Donovan ...... 206 Figure 6.15: Andreja Pejić (left) and Casey Legler (right) in “Liberdade De Escolha”, Vogue Brasil June 2013, photographed by Mario Testino ...... 209 Figure 6.16: Legler in “Girls like us”, published in Modern Weekly (China) Fall/Winter 2014, photographed by Txema Yeste ...... 212 Figure 6.17: Left to right: Irina K, Marcel Castenmiller, Casey Legler and Chiharu Okunugi, i- D online 2014, photographed by Daniel Jackson, stylist Alistair McKimm ...... 215 Figure 7.1: Nef walking in Hood By Air SS15 runway, NYFW Spring 2015 ...... 236 Figure 7.2: Nef walking in Eckhaus Latta S/S15 runway ...... 236 Figure 7.3: Nef in the Gucci Men’s wear AW 2016 Ready-to-wear runway ...... 236 Figure 7.4: Nef in H&M Studio AW 2016 Ready-to-wear runway ...... 236 Figure 7.5: Dakota Johnson, Hari Nef and Petra Collins in Gucci Bloom campaign image, August 2017, photographed by Glen Luchford ...... 237 Figure 7.6: Hari Nef in The Travel Almanac Autumn/Winter 2017, photographed by Julia Hetta… ...... 237 Figure 7.7: “Chanel” editorial in Exit Magazine Fall/Winter 2015, photographed by Santiago and Mauricio Sierra, fashion editor and stylist Michaela Dosamantes ...... 239 Figures 7.8: “Chanel” editorial in Exit Magazine Fall/Winter 2015, photographed by Santiago and Mauricio Sierra, fashion editor and stylist Michaela Dosamantes ...... 240 Figure 7.9: Hari Nef in Adam Selman AW15 Ready-to-wear runway ...... 241 Figure 7.10: Hari Nef in Mansur Gavriel 2016 campaign, photographed by Tanya and Zhenya Posternak ...... 242 Figure 7.12: Excerpts from Hari Nef and Andres Velencoso in “Honeymoon”, CANDY Magazine January 2017, photographed by Sebastian Faena, fashion editor and stylist Sofia Achaval ...... 246 Figure 8.1: Richie Shazam in “Richie Shaϟam”, Bullett Magazine December 2015, photographed by Oscar Ouk ...... 266
Genderqueer fashion models and their representations of gender in visual culture. viii
Figure 8.2: Richie Shazam in “Richie Shaϟam”, Bullett Magazine December 2015, photographed by Oscar Ouk ...... 267 Figure 8.3: Richie Shazam in VFiles SS16 runway wearing Moses Gauntlett Cheng ...... 268 Figure 8.4: (Top left) Richie Shazam Khan in Ashish SS 2017 Ready-to-wear runway, NYFW269 Figure 8.5: (Top right) Richie Shazam Khan in Barragan SS 2017 Ready-to-wear runway, NYFW……...... 269 Figure 8.6: (Bottom left) Richie Shazam Khan in Rachel Comey SS 2017 Ready-to-wear runway ...... 269 Figure 8.7: (Bottom right) Richie Shazam Khan in Lou Dallas FW 2017 runway, Office Magazine 2017 ...... 269 Figure 8.8: Richie Shazam Khan in excerpts from photo series for Dazed & Confused online February 2016, photographed by Dicko Chan ...... 272 Figure 8.9: “Richie at my studio #24”, by Terry Richardson ...... 274 Figure 8.10: “Richie Shazam and Candy Ken at my studio #1”, by Terry Richardson Figure 8.11: Richie Shazam at my studio #2”, by Terry Richardson ...... 274
Genderqueer fashion models and their representations of gender in visual culture. ix
List of Tables
Table 1: Characteristics of gender binary ...... xv Table 2.1: Case study social media network size (as of November 2018) ...... 30 Table 2.2: Benefits and limitations of IMR methods in order of use ...... 42 Table 2.3: Case study structure ...... 45
Genderqueer fashion models and their representations of gender in visual culture. x
Glossary of Terms and Abbreviations
Biopsychosocial: a term used in queer biology and originating from broader health sciences. While this term usually describes how diseases progress via an intricate interplay between biology, psychology and social/environmental factors, queer biology borrowed it to explain how an individual becomes gendered. Important to note here is the concept of neuroplasticity and how environmental factors and socialising can literally rewire the brain. This accounts for the consistent repetition of gendered behaviours, reflecting the binary of man/woman and masculinity/femininity.
Cisgender: when an individual’s gender identity correlates with their sex assigned at birth. ‘Cis’ is a Latin prefix commonly used in chemistry to denote two atoms or molecules connected on the same side of a chemical structure. It is the opposite of ‘trans’, which implies a connection across categories.
Gender: the social expression of sexual difference.
Gender binary: refers to the categorisation of gender as dualistic, opposite and binary. Escobar (1995) posits that this follows a Western tendency for binary categorisation. The gender binary is largely theorised as a Western system in postcolonialist theory. Many non-
Western cultures exhibit systems of gender outside a binary, particularly pre-colonisation. For example, the Native American Navajo tribe
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operated with gender systems with four genders: categories similar to the man and woman of the Western gender binary, but also the
“masculine female-bodied nádleeh” and the “feminine male-bodied nádleeh” (Spade and Valentine 2017, 74).
Gender expression: the way an individual expresses their gender/s aesthetically (looks, behaves, acts). This is intrinsically linked to gender ideals, as an individual can bend/trouble these ideals to form the gender expression they desire. This expression can change and is not necessarily the same as gender identity, although it can be read as synonymous.
GNC: Gender nonconforming. This refers to those who do not conform to traditional ideas of masculinity or femininity in their gender expression.
Gender ideals: social standards for how a gender should look, act and behave according to ‘social standards’. Heteronormative gender ideals refer to traditional notions of femininity or masculinity, which for much of history were understood as the direct expression of femaleness and maleness.
Gender identity: “A person's internal, deeply held sense of their gender.
For transgender people, their own internal gender identity does not match the sex they were assigned at birth. Most people have a gender identity of man or woman (or boy or girl). For some people, their gender identity does not fit neatly into one of those two choices… Unlike gender expression… gender identity is not visible to others” (Gay & Lesbian
Alliance Against Defamation [GLAAD] 2016).
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Heteronormative: a term coined by Judith Butler to describe social systems of presumed heterosexuality, where heterosexuality is privileged and heterosexual identities and interests are foregrounded— for example, marriage, reproduction, traditional gender roles.
Heterosexist: a term that describes discriminatory views and practices against homosexuality and other sexualities in a society where heterosexuality is assumed as the ‘normal’ orientation. Closely linked to this is Rich’s (1980) notion of “compulsory heterosexuality”, where heterosexuality is presumed and enforced within a patriarchal society.
Male/female assigned at birth, designated male at birth/designated female at birth: sex assigned at birth or designated sex at birth refers to the category of sex medically assigned to an infant at birth. This term is preferred over ‘biologically’ male or female, as it accounts for the process of medically attributing sex, which contributes to broader systems of reproducing heteronormative, binary sex and gender.
Nonbinary: a gender identity that is neither ‘woman’ nor ‘man’.
Sometimes, nonbinary individuals will designate their gender identity as trans nonbinary to indicate their distance from their assigned sex at birth. Some nonbinary individuals may add the terms ‘femme’ or ‘masc’ to their gender description to indicate the nature of their gender expression. Some nonbinary individuals prefer the use of they/them pronouns, while others are still happy to be referred to with binary
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pronouns. A vast range of specific and nuanced gender identities and expressions exist within the nonbinary gender identity category.
Normative: an objective term for what is considered ‘normal’ in a particular context, or a category that adheres to societal norms. Where
‘normal’ indicates a value judgement, ‘normative’ conveys the contextual conditions that define ‘normal’, which are specific to the social and cultural aspects of that setting. In a poststructuralist ethos, there is no such thing as ‘normal’, because normal is a social construction.
POC: Person of colour.
Prescriptive femininity/masculinity: expressions of femininity and masculinity that adhere to heteronormative ‘prescriptions’ of binary gender expression deemed acceptable within a heterosexist patriarchal society. Mears (2011, 16) explains that “prescriptions of masculinity and femininity” can be seen in fashion images, because the models featured promote and disseminate “ideas about how women and men should look” (16, original emphasis). Prescriptive masculinity and femininity connects bodily aesthetics to binary understandings of gender. In this binary, men and women are theorised as having opposite qualities (and aesthetics), described in Table 1.
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Table 1: Characteristics of gender binary
Man/masculine/masculinity Woman/feminine/femininity Active Passive Rational Emotional Strong Fragile Tough-skinned Sensitive Undecorated/plain Decorated/adorned Hard Soft Useful Decoration Practicality over vanity Vanity over practicality
Queer: In a categorical sense, the term ‘queer’ is frequently used to refer to all that is not heteronormative. While some groups identify more or less significantly with the term ‘queer’ as an identity marker, in the context of this research project, it is used more broadly in a methodological sense of queering the ‘normal’ or heteronormative
(where biology equals sex equals gender equals hetero-desire). Similarly, the term ‘genderqueer’ is used to refer to all gender identities that are not cisnormative. This project acknowledges that grouping a diverse range of gender identities—such as trans, nonbinary, GNC, queer, agender (Facebook United Kingdom [UK] recognises 72 alternatives for gender, including ‘other’)—under one term is problematic for those individuals. However, in the context of this project, the term
‘genderqueer’ does not disregard this diversity, but is used as a methodological term for nonheteronormative gender identities.
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Sex: the physical anatomy of the body, described in terms of physical makeup, reproductive capacity, hormonal and chromosomal configuration. Sex is largely described in terms of male and female, but research suggests that up to 1.7% of the population is categorically
‘intersex’ (Fausto-Sterling 1993). This figure accounts for a broad range of intersex variations and disordered sex developments, while a lower estimate of 0.018% restricts the definition of intersex to those for whom chromosomal sex and physical attributes do not correlate with binary definitions (Sax 2002).
Sexuality: the nature of sexual preference as defined by one’s own gender and the gender of attraction. Queer theory proposes that sexuality could be framed as preference for sexual practices and behaviours rather than being limited to gendered attractions, as traditional definitions of sexuality rely on and further reproduce stable, binary categories of gender.
Transgender: “Transgender is an adjective used to refer to individuals or practices that diverge from the conventional cultural norms regarding sex/gender” (Teo 2014, 1996). While some transgender individuals identify on the opposite side of the gender binary to what their body was designated at birth, many transgender individuals identify between.
The term ‘trans’ can refer to all gender identities that are decidedly not cisgender. It is often written as ‘transgender’ to indicate the broad use of the prefix and to account for all the associated identities.
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Transsexual: “An older term that originated in the medical and psychological communities. Still preferred by some people who have permanently changed—or seek to change—their bodies through medical interventions, including but not limited to hormones and/or surgeries.
Unlike transgender, transsexual is not an umbrella term. Many transgender people do not identify as transsexual and prefer the word transgender” (Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation [GLAAD] 2016).
Genderqueer fashion models and their representations of gender in visual culture. xvii Statement of Original Authorship
The work contained in this thesis has not been previously submitted to meet requirements for an award at this or any other higher education institution. To the best of my knowledge and belief, the thesis contains no material previously published or written by another person except where due reference is made.
Signature: QUT Verified Signature
Date: April 2019
Genderqueer fashion models and their representations of gender in visual culture. xviii
Acknowledgements
To my stylish and talented supervisors who made this possible, thank you so much for all your hard work!
To my parents, particularly my Mum, for your continuous support and for literally feeding me throughout this process—there is no way I could have done this without you!
Finally, to all those individuals whose identity is politicised in its very existence—thank you for existing. To quote Lavern Cox’s Twitter, as she quotes bell hooks, the “cisnormative heteronormative white supremacist capitalist patriarchy” is being slowly burnt to the ground by each and every one of you!
Genderqueer fashion models and their representations of gender in visual culture. xix
A Note on Language
‘Genderqueer’ is an important theoretical term used in this project that requires definition from the outset. I define it as referring collectively to models whose gender identity is not cisnormative. While the subjects of the four case studies in this thesis personally identify as different and specific gender identities, including transgender woman, queer butch woman and nonbinary queer person, the word
‘genderqueer’ is used to identify them as a group in contrast to gendernormative identities. The term ‘genderqueer’ can be adopted as a specific gender identifier on its own, and this project in no way assigns this gender identity to its case studies. The word ‘genderqueer’ was chosen over ‘queer’ because the project specifically examines issues of gender as opposed to broader experiences of queerness, such as sexuality. To mitigate the potentially problematic categorising of the case study subjects as ‘genderqueer’ collectively, this project uses gender identities and preferred pronouns from existing interviews with
Pejić, Legler, Nef and Khan in which they specifically address their own gender identity. This project also acknowledges that these identities and preferred nouns may change in the future.
Genderqueer fashion models and their representations of gender in visual culture. xx
Chapter 1: Introduction
This project is born from overlapping interests: a longstanding fandom of fashion model Andreja Pejić, a personal interest in queer culture and discourse, and a persistent and nagging belief that fashion has an immense capacity to make social and political agendas visible.
These preoccupations translate into my own fashion practice with The
Stitchery Collective. In our socially engaged practice, we use fashion as a central design strategy to create programs that connect diverse, vibrant communities. One of our most recent projects (May 2018) was a large- scale costume and dance party in honour of radical drag artist and
Australian queer icon Leigh Bowery as part of the MELT Festival of Queer
Arts and Culture at Brisbane Powerhouse. The project propositioned the audience to experiment with radical drag culture and challenge their social inhibitions through critical costume practice.
As a fashion researcher who identifies as a cisgender woman, I am acutely aware of how fashion models are seen to validate identities and bodies. Further, I am aware that fashion is one of the most immediate and significant communicators of gender, because our gender is read via our fashioned bodies. Moreover, while both the history of fashion and contemporary fashion practices provide many examples of individuals who trouble the relationship between bodily aesthetics and gender, fashion remains a system that routinely reinforces binary notions of
Introduction 1
gender, despite its transformative capacity to transcend them. That is, fashion can simultaneously reproduce and deconstruct identity norms.
Fashion models are traditionally understood as perpetuating identity norms, but a new wave of genderqueer fashion models that have emerged since 2010 are challenging this assumption. Throughout this thesis, I propose that genderqueer fashion models challenge some of the key tenets of the cultural functions of fashion models, who hold a place in the popular imagination as ideal representations of women. This project contends that the phenomenon of genderqueer fashion models represents a shift in the idealisation of gendered beauty.
Historically, the model’s function has always been closely connected to changing social attitudes towards women while serving the progression of consumer culture. The model’s very emergence is directly linked to the intensification of consumer culture at the end of the nineteenth century, and to the gendered nature of consumption. This project argues that models are products of structural heteronormativity and commodification in both the institutions of fashion and the broader social system of consumption. However, contemporary gender discourse, influenced by queer theory, problematises the notion of gender as a stable, fixed, binary category. Indeed, queer theory challenges any fixed category of identity.
Throughout this study, I have drawn on the work of poststructuralist Judith Butler ([1990] 1999), specifically her notion of
Introduction 2
troubling gender, to help frame the practices and visibilities of genderqueer models. Traditionally, the function of fashion models has been to cement the relationship between beauty and heteronormative gender. Genderqueer models trouble this gendered function in both mainstream imagery and the fashion industry. Consequently, this project’s main aim is to investigate how and what this troubling of gender means in the context of genderqueer models.
In addition to gender, I employ the concept of ‘cultural intermediaries’ to situate the practices of genderqueer models within the fashion industry and broader cultural and social contexts. Scholars such as Bourdieu (1984) and Skov (2002) define cultural intermediaries as actors within the systems of consumption who mediate cultural value in framing cultural goods. In The cultural intermediaries reader, Julian
Matthews and Jennifer Smith Maguire (2014, 1) define cultural intermediaries as:
the taste makers defining what counts as good taste and cool culture in today’s marketplace. Working at the intersection of culture and economy, they perform critical operations in the production and promotion of consumption, constructing legitimacy and adding value through the qualification of goods.
The authors explain that cultural intermediaries “construct value by mediating how goods (or services, practices, people) are perceived and engaged with by others” (Matthews and Smith Maguire 2014, 1). In the case of genderqueer fashion models, ‘goods’ can be interchanged with
Introduction 3
‘people’, as the models are constructing value around people of diverse gender identities, modelled by their own visible identities.
Fashion scholars Entwistle (2006) and Wissinger (2009) use this concept to identify fashion models as cultural intermediaries within the aesthetic economy of fashion. The authors explain that the main function of fashion models is to mediate the notion of being fashionable through their professional work and broader visibility. In the case of normative feminine fashion models, the mediation occurs via “aesthetic labor” (Entwistle and Wissinger 2006, 774) that presents idealistic yet normative bodily aesthetics as both economically and culturally valuable. However, in the case of genderqueer models, industry validation—or the market value of their aesthetic labour—allows them to frame gender-diverse identities as validated and culturally valuable.
By using the concept of cultural intermediaries to describe the function of mediation fashion models perform, this project contends that the cultural content models produce functions beyond the economic value system of the fashion industry and is in fact a mediation of emerging ideas about gender. In the case of queered gender, they mediate these ideals from the fringes of cultural production, via a range of media channels, to the mainstream of fashion commerce. In addition, as the fashion system is known for determining social ideals of beauty, this project also examines how these models mediate new ideals that
Introduction 4
present powerful challenges between the taken-for-granted connection between heteronormative gender and beauty.
Research Question
This project investigates the central research question, “How do genderqueer fashion models validate nonheteronormative identities and contribute to the wider debate on gender?”
To investigate this central research question, two further questions are explored:
• How are genderqueer fashion models mainstreaming and
making visible trans and genderqueer identities?
• How do these models reconcile the tension between their
commercial and political identities through the existing
structures of the fashion-modelling industry?
This project’s hypothesis is that genderqueer fashion models make contemporary ideas of gender visible through the commercial embodiment of their queer gender identities, through which they present a new visual language of gender and validate gender nonconformity in visual culture. They achieve this by making their diverse gender identities culturally valuable through their work as cultural intermediaries, and by becoming increasingly visible in mainstream channels of visual culture. Whilst representations of queer genders can be seen historically across visual culture, not least by fashion modelling itself, this project contends that contemporary
Introduction 5
genderqueer fashion models offer a more socially significant function through the commodification of their genderqueer identities. These genderqueer fashion models more actively craft their emancipatory and nonconforming gender identities throughout the cultural production and mediation process. This in turn has implications for mainstream gender ideology, as these models represent commodified and saleable non- normative identities, after which consumers can model their own identity. Representations of queer gender seen in the past, such as androgynous looks performed more commonly by cisnormative models, instead present a ‘look’ or an aesthetic as commodity, as opposed to a valued social identity. These are tangibly different products, which are entirely defined by the context within they are produced.
Representations of queer gender made in the past by cisgendered models or public identities may too have had an emancipatory effect for viewers, but in the context of the seismic contemporary shifts around gender equality and diversity, contemporary genderqueer models have the capacity to normalise and affect a structural change to how visual culture represents gender, and therefore how technologies of gender are disseminated.
This project presents four case studies of four genderqueer fashion models: Andreja Pejić (Figure 1.1), Casey Legler (Figure 1.2), Hari Nef
(Figure 1.3) and Richie Shazam Khan (Figure 1.4). The case studies analyse a collection of visual texts from each model’s professional portfolio, reading these texts for the ways in which the models trouble
Introduction 6
gender through their aesthetic labour. In addition, the case studies present an analysis of selected interviews and profiles (written texts) published about the models to highlight the ways in which each model communicates a central message or narrative centred on their gender identity.
Introduction 7
Figure 1.1: (top left) Andreja Pejić for Vogue Australia April 2018
Figure 1.2: (top right) Casey Legler for Numero Homme Spring/Summer 2018
Figure 1.3: (bottom left) Hari Nef for CANDY Magazine #10 2017
Figure 1.4: (bottom right) Richie Shazam Khan for Dazed Digital February 2016
Introduction 8
Aims
This thesis aims to build new knowledge about the genderqueer fashion model, extend existing literature on fashion models and contribute to the field of fashion studies, gender studies, and gender and media studies. Specifically, it intends to:
• document the rise of the genderqueer fashion model
• examine the continuous negotiation of gender as it emerges in
the photographic work of highly visible genderqueer fashion
models
• articulate how key tensions in contemporary gender debates
are embodied by genderqueer models
• perform an intersectional interrogation of the phenomenon of
genderqueer fashion models, with reference to how their
visibility is defined by systems built upon the privileging of
specific identities.
In the following section, I outline the sociocultural contexts that frame the rise of genderqueer models. I begin by introducing the background in legislation and cultural representation of gender queer identities over the last 10 years, following which I give an overview of how understandings of gender have progressed in the cultural context surrounding fashion.
Introduction 9
Framing the genderqueer fashion model The visibility afforded to genderqueer models can be understood in a context of broader social shifts. The international movement towards gender and sexual equality and the recognition of gender diversity has progressed significantly over the last 10 years. Indicators of progress include legislative, social and cultural milestones pertaining to the gradual acceptance of diverse identities across the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex and others (LGBTQ+) spectrum.
Legislation milestones include the introduction of marriage equality in many countries, including the United States (US), the UK, Canada,
Brazil, Malta, Portugal, Spain, South America, Uruguay and, in 2017,
Australia. Varying forms of same-sex civil union have also been legislated in Chile, Czech Republic, Ecuador, Greece, Italy and Poland. Many countries have also introduced the option of legal identification as a third, nonbinary sex (legalised in Australia in 2011), with some, such as
Canada, offering birth certificates that do not state the sex of infants.
Progress has also been made in intersex rights, including the outlawing of normalisation surgery for intersex infants in Malta (2015).
Transgender rights have progressed significantly, with many countries now not requiring an individual to undergo surgery or surgeries to legally qualify as an identified gender. Further, in June 2018, the World
Health Organization (WHO 2018) officially stopped classifying gender incongruence as a mental health disorder in its International
Classification of Diseases, which means that being transgender,
Introduction 10
nonbinary or gender nonconforming (GNC) can no longer be diagnosed as a mental illness. Broader legislation to deinstitutionalise binary language has been introduced in some progressive countries, including the formal inclusion of a new gender-neutral pronoun in Swedish (in
2015) and its compulsory use in early education. Additionally, in Canada, antidiscrimination laws have been extended to include transgender and
GNC people as a protected group by way of Bill C-16 in June 2017.
Gender-neutral bathrooms are also becoming increasingly common in public institutions. Globally, changing attitudes towards gender are being reinforced via a range of legislations.
Changes in attitudes towards gender have also filtered through to digital platforms and media culture. In 2014, Facebook UK introduced 71 gender options for users, including a customisable ‘other’ option
(Williams 2014). LGBTQ+ content and individuals are also increasingly visible in film and television. LGBTQ+ content has been incrementally popularised since the late 1990s, particularly on television. In the US,
Ellen DeGeneres became the first lead character to publicly come out on a television series in 1997; Will and Grace was launched in 1998; the highly popular series Queer as Folk was released in 2000; and The L word was broadcast in 2004.
These television shows set themselves apart from other mainstream content, as they positioned diverse LGBTQ+ narratives at the centre of their stories, thus mainstreaming LGBTQ+ content on television and
Introduction 11
popular culture. The last decade has seen a significant surge in LGBTQ+ representation on television, partially due to the influence of new platforms for content production by streaming services such as Netflix and Hulu. Television shows that stand out for diversity include Netflix’s
Orange is the new black, which was released in 2013, and Amazon’s
Transparent, broadcast in 2014, both of which are ongoing and have broken barriers in terms of diverse LGBTQ+ representation.
The Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) has tracked
LGBTQ+ characters on television since 1996, and their most recent report shows that LGBTQ+ representation across television is at a record high of 6.4%, the highest recorded in the report’s history. Moreover, the
2017‒2018 report is the first in which consistent nonbinary characters could be accounted for in the data, as well as the first consistent appearance of asexual characters. This suggests that the diversity of
LGBTQ+ representations has increased as queer narratives become more mainstreamed.
Similarly, queer lead characters and themes are becoming increasingly common in film. In 2016, Moonlight made history as the first queer film to win the Oscar for Best Picture. Many films released in the last several years have featured significant LGBTQ+ narratives: The
Danish girl (2015), Carol (2015), Call me by your name (2017) and A fantastic woman (2017) are just a few examples. However, the most recent Studio responsibility index report by GLAAD shows that LGBTQ+
Introduction 12
representation in film actually decreased in 2017 from higher figures in
2016, begging the question of whether progress in the film industry has stalled (GLAAD Media Institute 2018). Since the release of Vingarne
(1916), counted as the first ever gay film (IMDb n.d.), there has been a consistent history of gender-diverse and queer films and a similar increase of LGBTQ+ narratives has been seen in television, indicating that their representation is now accepted by an increasingly mainstream audience.
High-profile celebrities are also paving the way for gender-diverse representation. The controversial Caitlyn Jenner announced her identity as a transgender woman via a Vanity Fair cover in July 2015. Celebrities such as Ruby Rose and Amandla Stenberg have publicly identified as genderqueer and nonbinary. In July 2014, actor Laverne Cox was the first transgender woman to grace the cover of Time magazine, and in 2015 was the first openly transgender person to be awarded a Daytime Emmy.
These legislative, cultural and social milestones are all evidence of a growing understanding of gender that moves beyond a hegemonic binary of male and female, and a rising social awareness of non-normative gender and life beyond the “heteronormative matrix” (Butler [1990]
1999).
Over the last 15 years, significant changes have also occurred in the fashion industry in regards to gender. These range from new design practices that move towards unisex or gender-neutral clothing, such as
Introduction 13
the nondemographic label 69us, experimental retail design that moves away from the gendered division of fashion consumption, such as the genderless retail popup Agender by department store Selfridges, and the mixing of menswear and womenswear in runway presentations by brands such as Gucci since 2017. Author of Androgyne: Fashion and gender
Patrick Mauriès (2017, 154) argues that emerging cultural definitions of gender have played a key role in early twenty-first century fashion design.
Similarly, the importance of gender as a contemporary issue has been reflected across fashion media, with Vogue labelling 2016 “the year of genderless fashion” (Bobb 2016). Further to this, trend forecasting agency WGSN has published trend reports since 2011 identifying gender as an important theme in marketing strategies and consumer attitudes, including reports on “Gender play: media & marketing update” (2011),
“Zero gender’ (2015) and “Genderful” (2015) fashion, “The beauty buzz:
Genderless beauty” (2016), and “The genderless generation” (2016).
Mauriès (2017, 155) argues that this renewed focus on gender in contemporary fashion stems from social shifts originating in the latter half of the twentieth century:
The manifestations in contemporary fashion are the most striking and evolved sign of the disruption of the supposedly natural order and opposition of the sexes, as well as of the social changes occurring in its wake. But they are also—and this point cannot be over-stressed—the belated expression, post facto, of
Introduction 14
the philosophical, psychological and sociological questioning of the 1970s.
That is, new approaches to gender in fashion are underscored by long histories of activism and academic efforts in the latter decades of the twentieth century. These movements are discussed further in Chapter 2.
Mauriès’ argument might be extrapolated here to argue that recent developments in fashion are also influenced by a long history of GNC icons from music, film and broader culture, such as David Bowie and
Grace Jones. While these figures and many more paved the way for more commercially sanctioned representations of gender nonconformity, it is worth stating here that individual exemplars who stood out in a broader system of structural heteronormativity are not the focus of this project.
In fact, this project contends that these icons becoming exemplars only further demonstrates the hegemonic nature of the cultural fields that bore them. This project proposes that in the early twenty-first century, genderqueer fashion models emerged as a new form of institutionalised gender nonconformity—they are commercially and culturally sanctioned, as demonstrated by their continued success and a sustained increase in their numbers.
The number of gender-diverse fashion models working in the fashion industry has steadily risen since the early twenty-first century, although models who explicitly challenge traditional ideas of gender have existed since the 1990s. Models such as Jenny Shimizu and Kristen
McMenamy emerged in the context of the grunge fashion trend to
Introduction 15
channel a new androgynous and ‘unusual’ beauty, often presenting a challenging, masculinised version of feminine beauty. However, since
2010, models whose careers centre on more nuanced notions of gender identity and gender diversity have become more prominent. New genderqueer fashion models commercially embody their non-normative gender identity and place it at the forefront of their aesthetic labour and promotion of self within their professional practice. The following section discusses the study of fashion imagery and unpacks how fashion images might be used to interrogate social ideals and political agendas.
Studying images of fashion In this project, fashion images are used as evidence in documenting and analysing the work of the four fashion genderqueer models in the case studies—therefore, a brief discussion of the function of fashion imagery, and particularly of the fashion photograph, is warranted. In the somewhat benign articulation of mid‒twentieth-century photographer
David Bailey, fashion photography is “a portrait of someone wearing a dress” (c. 1965, in Victoria and Albert Museum 2014). However, following Nancy Hall-Duncan (1979, 9), any definition of fashion photography must make explicit reference to its commercial function.
Adding to this is Geczy and Karaminas’ (2015, xiv) psychoanalytical observation that “the powerful dissemination of fashion imagery determines what is most desirable”. The combination of Bailey’s, Hall-
Duncan’s, and Geczy and Karaminas’ observations leads to an abbreviated yet persistent understanding of a fashion photograph: it is
Introduction 16
an image of a (female-gendered) body wearing fashion, the primary function of which is to drive consumption of that fashion by arousing desire. Consequently, the body of the fashion model is ostensibly transformed into an object serving a commercial function that principally elicits a female spectatorship. Thus the familiar argument: the fashion photograph and the fashion model work to normalise gender and its connection to idealised beauty for the implied (and desiring) female viewer via a commercial context.
Roland Barthes (1990, 5) describes fashion photography as having its “own lexicon and syntax” separate from conventions of the “news photograph” or “snapshot” of the time. However, Shinkle (2008, 4) argues that Barthes’ characterisation of fashion photography reflects the homogeneity of the field at the time (c. 1959), as it was constrained to relatively limited technology and means of publication. In fact, fashion photography is an ambiguous and increasingly conceptually ambitious genre of visual communication that has attracted critical attention in the form of museum exhibitions over the last 20 years. Shinkle (2008, 2) therefore extends on Hall-Duncan to suggest that all fashion photography is connected by its “simultaneous placement within the artistic and commercial realms”. She argues that the balance between
“creativity versus commerce” is the “very identity of fashion imagery”, but that “art and commerce don’t necessarily exist in a relationship of opposition”, and that relationship is “shifting and highly permeable”
(Shinkle 2008, 2).
Introduction 17
Certainly, contemporary fashion photography is more multiplicitous and difficult to define, as it exists in many forms. Shinkle (2008, 4) contends that now, “there is not a single and easily described genre of
‘fashion photography’”, and it consists of a “wide array of practices”, including editorial, beauty, portraiture and documentary photography
(2). Stylistically, contemporary fashion photography also borrows from a range of practices, most significantly cinematic narratives and pornography. The rise of digital technologies also complicates investigating the field of fashion photography, because fashion imagery is now produced by both professional and amateur creators. Street style photography, personal style blog photography and social media imagery such as Instagram images co-exist with the categories that Shinkle identifies. Nevertheless, contemporary fashion imagery retains key features, as it depicts a body, features fashion or garments and continues to sit between commercial and artistic domains.
The lens I bring to the analysis of fashion imagery in this thesis has a political inflection, and I draw on arguments made by John Hartley and
Ellie Rennie (2004) in their defence of the value of reading fashion photographs as evidence of social truths. Hartley and Rennie (2004, 477) assert that fashion photography’s history is inextricable from that of photojournalism, and while one supposedly valourises “truth” and the other “beauty”, the methods of construction and the resulting meaning produced are not so dissimilar:
Introduction 18
Contemporary fashion photography constitutes both a secularization of the sublime (beauty) and a new form of “laymen’s books and schoolmasters” (truth). It documents contemporary life and teaches some important truths, largely via visualizations of the human body in often quite testing situations. The fashion magazines disseminate all this at a price that makes them the cheapest and most accessible source of high aesthetic imagery available today. They address a feminized (but not entirely female) public who know that the modernist separation between public and private life, politics and consumption, documentary photojournalism and fashion photography, is so over.
Hartley’s and Rennie’s argument is that fashion photography is a valuable text, carrying cultural and social value as a form of highly stylised and creative document that communicates ideas about contemporary social conditions.
Further, Hartley and Rennie (2004, 462) argue that mainstream publications featuring fashion photography, such as Vogue, are “a primary location for thinking through some abiding issues of public interest that clearly belong to the same world as that covered by political journalism”. Much contemporary fashion photography— epitomised by the long collaboration between Steven Meisel and Vogue
Italia—shows this engagement with broader political, environmental and social issues: the editorial “Water & oil” (April 2010) addressed the BP oil spill in the Mexican Gulf in April 2010, and the fashion editorial on plastic surgery featuring Linda Evangelista, “Makeover madness”
(December 2010), also led to critical discourse. This project proposes
Introduction 19
that fashion photography featuring genderqueer fashion models may act as a visual tool for thinking through the issue of gender diversity and new definitions of gender. In this way, genderqueer models act as cultural intermediaries between the personal, often hidden, experiences of gender-diverse individuals and their public articulation. Thus, genderqueer models contribute to the mainstreaming of gender issues.
Gap in Literature and Significance of Research
In the realm of fashion studies, scholars such as Craik (1994) and
Mears (2011) contend that fashion models are icons of normative gender, and their performance is the professionalisation of heteronormative gender ideals. However, recently emerged genderqueer fashion models have moved beyond heteronormative gender identities and yet experience success and validation in the fashion industry.
Consequently, this project contends that the emergence of genderqueer fashion models suggests there is further investigation to be made into the gendered function of fashion models.
The interpretation of genderqueer fashion models as cultural intermediaries is tested here in relation to how their commercially embodied gender identity troubles heteronormative categories through their aesthetic labour and promotion of self. In addition to an interpretive cultural analysis of the work of four contemporary genderqueer fashion models, the project also maps the history of the heteronormative model and problematises the way in which the
Introduction 20
cisgender model has been framed in fashion studies. Therefore, a discussion of gender discourse and queer theory is used to position and differentiate the genderqueer fashion model within the contemporary fashion industry.
This project thus contributes insights into the growing popular fashion discourse of diversity, and the representation of this diversity in the mainstream through the body of the genderqueer model. It offers in- depth analysis of the way in which the genderqueer model’s ambiguity, and therefore difference and fluidity, is communicated in visual and written texts. In doing so, it critiques the existing body of work on fashion models and its ambivalence towards the heteronormative fashion model by mapping out a new phenomenon of gender representation and cultural mediation of the genderqueer model in the fashion industry.
Limitations
This project has some limitations dictated by its scope. First, the case studies do not analyse social media content or self-published amateur content produced by the four chosen fashion models. While it is important to acknowledge the significant role social media plays in the visibility of contemporary fashion models, this project seeks to analyse the professional work of fashion models as cultural intermediaries, because that work is produced within a broader professional network of people. Further to this, because of the prolific but amateur nature of
Introduction 21
social media platforms such as Instagram, a sizeable social media follower base does not necessarily define someone as a cultural intermediary. However, working professionally as a fashion model does frame an individual as a cultural intermediary because it bears the authorising stamp of the fashion industry, with its complex system of networks.
Second, because of the sustained qualitative analysis of key visual texts, interviews and articles, the scope of this project allows for only a small number of genderqueer fashion models to be studied. Although care has been taken from the project’s inception to ensure that the chosen models represent a cross-section of identities involved in this area, their study cannot represent an exhaustive analysis of a phenomenon that is increasingly growing.
Precis
This project investigates how genderqueer fashion models validate nonheteronormative identities and contribute to the wider debate on gender. Chapter 1 has introduced the research questions and project aims; Chapter 2 presents the methodology via which these questions were answered, making the case for the project’s research design as an interdisciplinary cultural study based on the interpretive analysis of visual and written texts involving the four genderqueer fashion models.
Chapter 3 explores the history of the gendered function of the fashion model. It begins by looking at definitions of gender and the relationship
Introduction 22
between fashion and gender, including theorisations of the gendered function of the fashion model via the work of Mears (2011), Craik (1994),
Evans (2001), and Entwistle and Mears (2012). Next, it reviews the history of the fashion model in the twentieth century to illustrate how the changing ideal of the fashion model’s body aesthetic reflects, embodies and perpetuates shifts in social values and attitudes towards gender. Finally, the chapter reviews the significant changes in model aesthetics and cultural understandings of gender that occurred towards the end of the twentieth century. The work of Judith Butler is used alongside queer theory to explain the new understandings of gender that emerged at this time.
Chapter 4 picks up from the 1990s context of Butler’s work and discusses the emergence of the genderqueer fashion model in the early twenty-first century. It then discusses the notion of cultural intermediaries via Bourdieu (1984) and Smith Maguire and Matthews
(2014) and how it has been applied to fashion. It also examines how fashion models have specifically been described as cultural intermediaries working in the aesthetic economy of fashion via the work of Entwistle (2006) and Wissinger (2009). Finally, the chapter unpacks the intersecting systems of representation and politics that define models’ visibility, concluding with several propositions that are tested in the case study chapters.
Introduction 23
Chapters 5‒8 detail the four case studies, which analyse the work and outputs of each of four genderqueer fashion models, respectively:
Andreja Pejić, Casey Legler, Hari Nef and Richie Shazam Khan. Each case study chapter is structured according to the model’s professional practice, first analysing how the model troubles gender in their professional fashion-modelling practice by analysing visual texts. The second section of each case study examines how each model communicates their message and defines their visibility through the media, and analyses written texts.
The concluding chapter discusses the key findings of this project in relation to the research questions. It compares the case studies, highlighting similarities and differences between the ways in which genderqueer fashion models trouble gender and become cultural intermediaries. The chapter also highlights the project’s limitations and outlines opportunities for future research.
Introduction 24
Chapter 2: Methodology
This project presents four case studies of genderqueer fashion models: Andreja Pejić, Casey Legler, Hari Nef and Richie Shazam Khan. It investigates the research question: “How do genderqueer fashion models validate nonheteronormative identities and contribute to the wider debate on gender?” Two interrelated subquestions follow from the research question:
• How do genderqueer fashion models mediate emerging ideas
about gender?
• What tensions associated with contemporary definitions of
gender do they embody?
The fashion model is a culturally ambiguous and complex figure that is both symbolic and commercial in its function. Therefore, its study requires a mode of analysis that is sensitive to its nuances. For this reason, the project draws on fashion studies as an interdisciplinary field.
As Rocamora and Smelik (2016, 3) point out, fashion is “by definition an interdisciplinary field”. The term ‘fashion’ encompasses all that is “dress, style and appearance” (Rocamora and Smelik 2016, 2) and is both a part of material culture and a symbolic system (Kawamura
2005). Fashion research has attempted to fortify itself as a discrete area of study over the past three decades, but has continuously been plagued by the problem of discipline-specific theoretical frameworks or
Methodology 25
methodological frameworks (Kawamura 2011, 1). Instead, fashion research borrows strategies from a range of interconnected disciplines, and fashion studies, with its “dense interdisciplinary entanglements”
(Jenss 2016, 11) requires “the use, combination, and adaptation of multiple methods” (Jenss 2016, 11). Thus, an interdisciplinary approach is required to provide an analysis that considers all the industry, cultural and social elements that have given rise to the phenomenon of genderqueer fashion models.
Case Study Methodology
A case study methodology was chosen for this project because it enables the analysis of people’s meaning-making practices, allowing the researcher to recognise a contemporary phenomenon that has emerged from complex contextual conditions. Robert K. Yin (2003, 13) defines a case study as “an empirical inquiry that investigates a contemporary phenomenon within its real-life context, especially when the boundaries between phenomenon and context are not clearly evident”. Yin contends that a case study approach is most appropriate when the contextual conditions are integral to the study of a phenomenon, as opposed to other research methods that divorce context from the analysis.
Stake (2006) and Hammersley, Gomm and Foster (2000) assert that a case studies approach allows the research questions to be tested using a relatively small sample size of subjects by conducting in-depth research into the conditions of the subjects’ emergence and continued
Methodology 26
success. Stake (2006, x) also argues that in studying a phenomenon, a multi-case study approach not only enables the study of the common characteristics present within that phenomenon, but also its “situational uniqueness … complexity and interaction with background conditions”.
Hammersley, Gomm and Foster add that a case study is often characterised by a range of data over which the researcher has no control of variables. As this project deals with existing data in the form of visual and written texts produced across a range of media, a case study methodology allowed the content to be systematically and uniformly organised and analysed for all case study subjects, despite their varied contexts.
For the complex subject of genderqueer fashion models, context is crucial, as the phenomenon is unique to the overlapping gendered function of fashion models with the broader social shift in gender discourse. Fashion is inextricably linked to society and identity, and in the case of genderqueer fashion models, changes in fashion run parallel to broader movements in gender discourse. The questions this project addresses focus on the nature of genderqueer fashion models’ agency in the context of broader social shifts. Do they merely reflect these changes, and is the embodiment of gender diversity a newly commercialised trend? Or do they actively play a role in changing social perceptions within the broader discourse around gender? This project contends that genderqueer models do both in a nuanced way, and reframes the phenomenon as cyclical and incremental.
Methodology 27
The four fashion models—Pejić, Nef, Legler and Khan—were selected because they have garnered considerable professional success, and thus have the potential to be revealing case study subjects. Their success has made them visible and, as case studies, they can reveal the complexities of this phenomenon.
To build each case study, I collected visual and written texts spanning fashion media, news media and social media. Yin (2003) argues that in a case study, best practice is to collect multiple sources of evidence to triangulate findings. In a single study, Yin suggests the use of “six sources of evidence” including “documentation, archival records, interviews, direct observation, participant-observation and artefacts”
(86). This project aimed to emulate this variation in evidence sources, but was limited to existing visual and written texts produced by and about the fashion models, testing the ways in which media further cemented the phenomenon by creating a discourse around it. For example, while Yin refers to interviews conducted directly between interviewers and subject, this project relied on interviews conducted by third parties, such as journalists who communicated their own point of view. This was accounted for in the interpretive analysis of these writings through a contextual analysis of their publication. The analysis was triangulated through multiple data forms, including fashion imagery, runway performances, interviews, social media and creative outputs, to build a holistic case for each model. This system helped build multiple
Methodology 28
accounts of mediation produced by different authors in different contexts and for different commercial goals.
The four chosen fashion models were selected as case study subjects for their varied levels of visibility in contemporary culture, including their reach in contemporary digital platforms (see Table 2.1), their close association with the discourse around gender and fashion, their willingness to engage in public conversations about their visibility, and the spectrum of identities and professional experiences they represent in photographic images. They also represent some diversity of gendered experience, therefore adding rigour to the project. Of the four subjects studied, one model is a person of colour (POC), and the rest are of white background and appearance. The phenomenon of genderqueer fashion models is still largely limited to white models, and this speaks to concerns of intersectionality that remain problematic in the fashion- modelling industry and sit at the core of queer theory. This is addressed in Chapter 3, which unpacks the culture of whiteness at the heart of the fashion-modelling industry and fashion’s visual culture, and throughout the case studies. Within the project’s limitations, the steps taken to include a diversity of cases in the phenomenon offer the most generalisable conclusions and add a reasonable level of rigour to the research.
Methodology 29
Table 2.1: Case study social media network size (as of November 2018)
Model Career dates Instagram Facebook Twitter following following following Andreja Pejić 2010‒ @andrejpejic 163,414 82,400 present 335,000 Casey Legler 2012‒ @_caseylegler 8,212 (not No public present 12,500 verified, Twitter possibly a fan- run page) Hari Nef 2015‒ @harinef 14,911 62,000 present 325,000 Richie 2016 @richieshazam No public 135 Shazam Khan (approx.) ‒ 25,500 Facebook page present
Interpretive Analysis
This project performs an interpretive analysis of the professional work and contextual backgrounds of the four case study subjects. The foundational work of Roland Barthes (1990) informs the stratified cultural structures created by fashion imagery and fashion communication, and the consideration of fashion as a system of signification. The concept of the fashion model as cultural intermediary taken from the work of Entwistle and the notion of troubling gender taken from Butler and queer theory are central to the analysis.
Collectively, these seemingly distant theories help locate the complex position of genderqueer fashion models within contemporary culture and frame the interpretive analysis in this project.
Interpretive analysis in this study draws on Barthes’ textual analysis and the practice of critically reading media texts and popular culture
(Halberstam 2011; Marcus 1989). Each case study involves close readings
Methodology 30
of texts and images that are indicative of each model’s career. These visual and written texts are read collectively as an indication of the model’s practice of genderqueer mediation. The following section reviews these methods taken from fashion studies and cultural studies.
Roland Barthes’ (1990) The fashion system is a key text in the cultural analysis of fashion. Barthes unpacks the semiology of fashion, examining how the cultural and the social are signified through dress itself, imagery of dress and the language of dress in a system of signification. Published in post-World War II France, Barthes’ work was a part of a broader movement in French academia towards structuralism, and was the first significant step in the academic study of fashion.
Noteworthy to this project is the notion that meaning is established by the codes and ideologies of society. Fashion is part of that system, and is read via dominant codes and ideologies such as the codes of heteronormative gender. In the study of genderqueer fashion models, ideologies around gender, the body and fashionability all are signifying systems that comprise the fashion image.
Following from the Marxist view of human economic behaviour in the categories of production, distribution and consumption (Carter
2003), Barthes (1990) distinguishes the fashion system as a set of relationships where garments transform modality as they progress through the system, moving between the real garment, the represented garment and the used garment. Barthes is most concerned with the
Methodology 31
represented garment, and further categorises these representations as
‘image-clothing’ and ‘written-clothing’. He makes the important point that in its represented image state, a garment can be interpreted imaginatively by the viewer, who brings their own meaning to its reading. Written-clothing, however, translates the garment into the more rigid system of language, and when accompanying image-clothing, fixes the image’s meaning. It is translated into written clothing via the discourse of fashion. According to Barthes (1968, 17), “the proper aim of description is to direct the immediate and diffuse knowledge of image- clothing through a mediate and specific knowledge of Fashion”. In contemporary fashion communication, it is not only the accompanying description of the garment that gives a fashion image meaning, but the context of that image: the magazine or online publication space, the models and kinds of bodies depicted, and the aesthetic references in the image all contribute to the way in which it is read. That is, although in
The fashion system Barthes claims that image-clothing can be openly interpreted and only cemented in meaning by written-clothing, this project argues that many levels of surrounding context give meaning to an image, even before it is described using written language.
Nonetheless, Barthes’ explanation of fashion language is important to this project, as the fashion images being analysed operate within a syntax specific to fashion. The images and written words considered here are all inextricably involved in the sale of fashion itself and the perpetuation of the ideology of being fashionable within a genderqueer
Methodology 32
cultural domain first, which then expands to mainstream. As a form of language, fashion communication exists at the intersection of several paradigms: aesthetics and design, the embodied form and commercial objectives. It is a loaded system of language with motives beyond representation or record. Following Barthes, this project presents a cultural analysis of fashion communication, which is inherently commercial and culturally specific. Indeed, the fashion model’s visibility is inextricable from their commercial function, but they also mediate idea about culture via this function.
Barthes’ system of fashion as communication through the process of signification can be expanded to fashion bodies. In this project, signification more broadly represents the embodied form of fashion and dress through the bodies of fashion models. Together, these parts produce the sign. Barthes (1967, 53) gives the example of how garment design features are signifiers, such as a linen overcoat signifying mid- season or cool summer evenings, or how mousseline or taffeta can signify cocktail attire. Through these signs, fashion also signifies gender.
In each fashion image, multiple elements may contribute to the signification of gender: the styling of hair and makeup, the styling of actual garments, the kinds of interiors and setting depicted, the narratives portrayed, the body language performed by a model and between models, and the bodily aesthetics of a model. That is, the signification of gender occurs not just through the physical garment, but through the entire fashioning of a body.
Methodology 33
Several fashion scholars have extended on Barthes’ work, including
Jobling (1999), Lehmann (2000) and Barnard (1996), offering more contemporary applications of semiotics in fashion. However, essentially,
Barthes’ work in The fashion system remains central to how we interpret the semiology of fashion culture. In reference to this project, semiotics are particularly useful to “decode and analyse fashion advertisements and photographs” (Kawamura 2011, 82), and are an integral part of the textual and visual analysis process, especially when interpreting visual texts via the semiotics of gender.
As explained in the introduction, a key part of this interpretive analysis is analysing visual texts such as fashion photographs. Fashion photography provides particularly rich opportunities for analysis, as it is essentially a creative output that is rich with social, historical and political agendas. As Jeremy Gilbert-Rolfe (1995, 258) explains:
The fashion photograph would have to be transgressive because we understand that knowledge is made by testing limits and the present … is that which transgresses against the past, aggressively displaying the distance between itself and that which has been left behind).
In the context of this project, the past is the heteronormative and the present is troubling it, thus transgressing the past. In this sense, a visual analysis of fashion imagery via the conceptual framework of gender unpacks how this new work by genderqueer fashion models breaks from heteronormativity.
Methodology 34
The key methods chosen within this case study methodology, namely interpretive analysis that draws on visual analysis, textual analysis, and semiotic analysis, diverge slightly from more traditional methods used in case study methodologies seen in social sciences, such as in-depth interviews or participant observation. Instead, the research design draws on methods of analysis from visual art, as the case studies rely on images and texts produced by models, but not necessarily the model themselves. This is a nuanced distinction to make: whilst this project is interested in the interviews given and words spoken by the subjects, it is only interested in these texts as they pertain to their broader careers, as pre-existing content that naturally exists as part of their fashion-modelling careers. As Entwistle and Slater (2014, 161) explain, a fashion-modelling career is alike to a brand – it is an object that “actors themselves classify and perform as ‘cultural’” (161). The authors often describe the fashion-modelling career as an “event”
(2012). Whilst this ‘event’ or ‘object’ is built around “the model’s ‘look’ as a cultural commodity” (Entwistle and Slater 2014, 162), and in some ways is synonymous with the model’s personhood, the conceptualisation of the fashion-modelling career that this project seeks to analyse consists of “an ‘assemblage’ composed of heterogeneous elements— images, practices, relations, settings—that is dispersed over time and space” (Entwistle and Slater 2012, 30) that populates the model’s presence in visual culture. For this reason, this project adopts the structural benefits of a case methodology but augments it by
Methodology 35
incorporating visual art methods, namely interpretive analysis that utilises visual, textual and semiotic analysis, as the case studies are about the chosen models’ careers, and less about their personhood as it might be studied within social sciences. Also, this study frames the model as a cultural intermediary, therefore interpretive analysis of the images disseminated supports an analysis of the models’ work as it is presented to the consumer or reader.
Data Selection
The collection of visual and written texts pertaining to Andreja
Pejić, Casey Legler, Hari Nef and Richie Shazam Khan focus on their presence in visual culture. Their visibility in fashion editorials, runway work and related media supports the definition of cultural intermediaries in that their fashion presence, public image and political agenda have contributed to the debate on queer issues in mainstream society. The texts analysed are:
• fashion imagery
• advertising campaigns
• interviews (written and filmed)
• the models’ own writings, such as opinion pieces and journal
articles
• creative outputs such as acting and public talks.
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Selecting the visual and written texts for each case study was performed via a structured process. While this project’s goal is to present comparable case studies of four genderqueer fashion models, each model’s career trajectory varies in length, position
(mainstream/alternative), fashion style (menswear/womenswear/both) and success. Therefore, the process of selecting key works and media content to analyse that are indicative of their broader careers was tailored to each model.
Each case study examines the career of a genderqueer fashion model and explores how they mediate ideas about gender via two channels: first, how their professional modelling work in fashion imagery and runway appearances aesthetically challenges gender; and second, how their presence in the media articulates their personal message about gender identity. It must be noted that Andreja Pejić has enjoyed the longest career of the four models studied, and her career is thus rich and complex, making her case study dense with information.
It is worth identifying here that the process used to select the specific collection of visual and written texts analysed in each case study was a nuanced process of both inductive and deductive logic. Kennedy
(2018, 50) explains that “deduction begins with a specific theory or rule and examines how the raw data support the rule”. Conversely, “inductive logic consists of inferring categories or conclusions based upon data”
(Kennedy 2018, 51). To put it simply, while deductive logic tests an
Methodology 37
existing hypothesis, inductive logic is used to draw conclusions from a study. This project uses deductive logic because it relies on some of my existing knowledge of and familiarity with the phenomenon as the initial process of content analysis to judge which fashion imagery and media pieces would be most useful for an analysis via themes of cultural mediation and gender. It is also inductive because findings were generated through the analysis and collated to offer answers to the central research question.
To place consistent constraints on the selection of visual and written texts to analysed, a similar timeframe was set for the study of each model, beginning from when they were first signed professionally as a model. The exception to this rule is Richie Shazam Khan, who remains unsigned. In Khan’s case, the starting point was determined by when Khan made their first significant fashion runway debut, signalling their commercially relevant entrance into the industry of fashion modelling. As these models are all currently working, the date range of their study was bookended by the 2017 calendar year.
Internet-Mediated Research
Central to both the context and the methodology of this project is the internet and digital media. The emergence of genderqueer fashion models (and the “commodification of differences”) is closely linked to the rise of new digital technologies in the context of advanced capitalism
(Braidotti 2011). Accordingly, their careers and vast bodies of work are
Methodology 38
documented and freely accessible online, despite much of their work originating in hard-copy print media such as fashion magazines and news journals. In the context of contemporary online networks, these traditional hard-copy outlets are presented digitally and sit alongside other digital-based media, such as online fashion magazines Dazed
Digital and i-D Online, and Vogue online’s extensive runway coverage.
Thus, internet-mediated research (IMR) (Hewson, Vogel and Laurent
2016) can be considered a valid methodological approach to accessing and collecting all work and media content that populate a model’s visibility.
IMR refers to a range of methods used for collecting primary and secondary research data that makes use of the internet (Hewson, Vogel,
Laurent 2016, 1). In this context, primary data refers to “the acquisition and analysis of data to produce novel evidence and research findings”, and secondary data refers to the use of “secondary information sources
(such as books and journal articles) to summarise existing findings and conclusions” (Hewson, Vogel and Laurent 2016, 1). This research adopted an unobtrusive IMR approach, as only existing visual and written texts were collected and the project involved no active participants. Unobtrusive IMR methods can further be categorised into two approaches: observation and document analysis (Hewson 2016). This project used document analysis, as existing documents freely available on the internet were collected and interpretively analysed.
Methodology 39
The visual and written texts collected and analysed in this project can be categorised as “naturally occurring” data (Speer 2008). Naturally occurring data sits in contrast to “contrived” or “researcher-provoked” data, and these terms are most commonly used in social research (Speer
2008, 290). The benefits of naturally occurring data are that they offer an insight into how a phenomenon is actually produced by those operating within it, as opposed to interviews with those involved, which instead offer an understanding of how a participant sees or perceives a phenomenon (Silverman 2011). While Silverman (2011) explains naturally occurring data in the context of social field research, this concept proved useful in this project, as the professional work of genderqueer fashion models can be considered naturally occurring data produced within the phenomenon.
The limitations of naturally occurring data are that they can be broadly interpreted, requiring researchers to have a clearly defined interpretive lens when working with them. Additionally, in what
Silverman (2011) describes as the “interview society” of contemporary research, producing new data and first-hand accounts are seen as favourable outcomes because they both more neatly fit within the study’s parameters, and first-hand data are given more credibility in terms of a phenomenon’s perceived ‘truth’. Although this study produced no new data and instead interpreted naturally occurring data, this approach to data collection provides the context, specificities and material suitable to a cultural analysis of the phenomenon of
Methodology 40
genderqueer models as a product of shifting social conditions. Analysing existing data allows them to be read via a predetermined interpretive lens, without bias or misdirection from interview dynamics. However,
Speer (2008) cautions against rigidly applying the natural/contrived binary in her research involving naturally occurring data in feminist conversation analysis, as it places value judgements on the data quality.
To find and collect the naturally occurring data relevant to each case study, in this project, existing internet-based databases that catalogue and record the careers and work of fashion models were accessed. These sites were used in a scaffolded system (see Table 2.2) to identify as much of each model’s portfolio as possible. Using this IMR system, a significant amount of naturally occurring data were collected that, to the best of the researcher’s knowledge, accurately reflects each subject’s portfolio. Ultimately, this system still relied on keyword internet searches to ensure that all possible existing visual and written texts were reviewed; however, it offered a level of consistency across each case study and provided thorough results.
Methodology 41
Table 2.2: Benefits and limitations of IMR methods in order of use
Stage Database, Benefits Limitations website or
IMR tool
1 Models.com • catalogues all • does not feature profiles editorial work by of unsigned models signed models • does not include runway • cross-links each appearances of models or work to all connect to interview individuals involved content and publication/ editorial images need website of origin • cross-referencing to • lists full ascertain context of bibliographic details original publication of editorial
2 Vogue.com • catalogues images • not as cross-linked, so and written searching for an summaries of all individual model’s work is contemporary not streamlined fashion runway only provides runway shows • imagery, not other kinds • provides detail shots of fashion images of each look and lists model names
3 Personal • provides leads on • not a thorough account of social media content across a all work, as re-posting accounts: range of media; work is an entirely Instagram models tend to subjective decision of the and repost content that page’s author Facebook contributes to their authorship is not visibility, hence • necessarily the model personal social media pages offer a themselves—some are fan pages and some public more holistic relations-run account of projects in which the model has been involved
• logged chronologically, and is hence easy to find content from a certain date
4 Web search • organic method of • relies on pre-existing engines finding data knowledge to ensure search terms garner accesses all types of • results data • all content must be cross- leads to an organic • checked for reliability and trial of hyperlink authorship, as many research, as pages websites regurgitate refer to other materials written by websites others
Methodology 42
The website models.com was used as the starting point for collecting visual texts for the first three case studies, as it catalogues and cross-links the editorial work of all contemporary signed fashion models. The benefit of this website is that it supplies all editorial images featuring the model in question, as well as full bibliographic details of each editorial. It also hyperlinks to the details of related individuals such as photographers who also are profiled on the same website.
The second step of data collection via IMR involved collecting visual texts of each model’s runway appearances via vogue.com. This online repository chronicles images and written summaries of every contemporary fashion runway show since the 1990s. Its benefits include the extensive visual coverage of runway looks, the high-definition image quality, and the listing of each individual model’s name. However, its limitation is that each model is not as easily searchable as on models.com, so finding a model’s entire runway portfolio can involve a longer process of content analysis across several seasons within each specific designer’s shows. In addition, runway images can only provide a limited understanding of the kind of gender these models perform on the runway.
To supplement the texts collected from models.com and vogue.com, the case study subjects’ social media pages, specifically
Facebook and Instagram, were scoured for further leads on visual and written texts potentially undiscovered in the first two steps. Although
Methodology 43
social media is highly subjective, fashion models frequently repost content that contributes to their visibility. In this way, if they have been involved in an editorial photoshoot, runway show or interview, they very often post a link on their personal social media to direct their follower base to that content. Social media contributes to a model’s visible profile and allows for some professional documentation of their work. It follows that if a website published an interview with a model and, in turn, that website received increased traffic from the model’s followers, this exchange would encourage a future working relationship.
Collecting visual and written texts for the Richie Shazam Khan case study presented unique challenges, as he is an unsigned model. This meant the scaffold was only applicable from the second step onwards.
As is discussed in his case study, Khan has only appeared in a handful of runway shows, editorials and campaigns, and featured in a limited number of fashion media interviews. While his work is not centrally catalogued on models.com because he is unsigned, the relative newness of his career means his portfolio is limited and therefore easier to collect.
Case Study Structure
Although the process of selecting visual and written texts was specific to each model, each case study follows a similar structure to allow for the clear comparison of analyses. This structure, explained in
Table 2.3, is designed to systematically address the research objectives
Methodology 44
outlined in the introduction and clearly frame the analysis in terms of the research questions. It enables a consistent analysis to be performed across each of the four case studies, and a comparable discussion to be made of the findings.
Table 2.3: Case study structure
Section Content Objectives and relevant research questions
1. Introduction How this case study furthers the Mapping the significance research question and a brief of the model within the overview of the model’s phenomena and bibliographic details. establishing context of their emergence.
2. Troubling An analysis via the model’s Answering how these gender professional work (fashion models trouble gender photographs, runway appearances, and therefore what and other visual products) via the contemporary notions of interpretive lens of ‘troubling gender discourse their gender’. Specifically unpacking how visibility portray. the model troubles notions of gender in their work and in what different ways do they achieve this, and what notions of gender this work makes visible.
3. Model as Analysis of media content Furthering the cultural examining how the models mediate interpretation of fashion intermediary: their gender trouble and via what models as cultural how and what channels this mediation is achieved. intermediaries of gender does the model by analysing what is being mediate? mediated and how they achieve this.
Conclusion
This chapter has explained how a case studies approach was used to perform an interpretive analysis of four genderqueer fashion models to ascertain how they make contemporary ideas of gender visible via the
Methodology 45
professional modelling practice. The interpretive analysis performed in the case studies was guided by a literature and historical review, detailed in the next two chapters, that unpacks the complex nature of the genderqueer fashion model. The following chapter begins this review by exploring the historical element of the story of the genderqueer fashion model; it also unpacks the concept of gender that sits at the heart of this project.
Methodology 46
Chapter 3: Gender and the Fashion Model in History
This chapter tells the backstory of the emergence of the genderqueer fashion model. It aims to establish the cultural and historical context of the twentieth century from which the genderqueer fashion model emerged in the early twenty-first century. The history of the gendered function of female and male fashion models combines two areas of scholarship, gender theory and fashion studies, to form the body of knowledge on which this research project rests. These areas provide the foundations for understanding contemporary genderqueer fashion models as a function of the twenty-first century fashion industry.
The chapter begins with the definition of gender and how it shifted in the twentieth century, along with shifting perceptions of the fashionable body. It then follows both lines of inquiry—gender and the history of the fashion model—in an intertwined way, concluding with an overview of the fashion model in the late twentieth and early twentieth-first century. The chapter argues that at the end of the twentieth century, the fashionable body became a site of aesthetic pluralism and, indeed, a social barometer in relation to questions of gender; it proposes that the function of the fashion model is ultimately the professionalisation of gender. This argument opens up a further area of inquiry towards the institution of the fashion model as a cultural intermediary in Chapter 4.
Gender and the Fashion Model in History 47
Gender and the Fashion Model
Gender is a twentieth-century concept articulating the socially constructed expression of sexual difference. Prior to the 1950s, gender and sex were seen as synonymous—however, early feminist scholarship and scientific research in the middle of the century challenged the perceived biology of gender and its connection to anatomy. Mid-century medical research began to identify gender as separate to sex in the study of intersex and trans patients (Stoller 1964, 1968; Oakley 1972) and interrogate the process of gender attribution in the medical realm
(Kessler and McKenna 1978). This research provided measurable evidence that challenged the popular idea of gender as inherently natural. Running parallel to these claims, feminist author Simone De
Beauvoir published her seminal text The second sex in 1949 (translated into English in 1953), which provided one of the first articulations of gender as a socially determined process. At this time, progressions in understanding gender across science, gender theory, and political and social activism worked together to form a shifting discourse around gender, with each forum building on the work of others.
De Beauvoir’s early articulations of gender remain central to understanding the reproduction of normative gender today. In The second sex, there are two fundamental and interrelated ideas referring to the construction of gender. First, De Beauvoir (1953) looks historically at the category of woman as defined as ‘other’ to man, framing the categories of man and woman in a hierarchical relationship where
Gender and the Fashion Model in History 48
woman is defined by what she is not. Later feminist movements would define this social order as patriarchal. De Beauvoir argues that the category of woman is connected to femininity, but explains that femininity is not an essential quality of the female body—hence her famous statement “one is not born, but rather becomes, a woman”
(295). Detailing the process of gendering as a transformation, De
Beauvoir explains that one becomes a woman through the process of adopting learned feminine behaviours. This transformation moves the subject towards socially predetermined ideas of the category ‘woman’.
In this way, De Beauvoir describes femininity as a learned response to socialised womanhood. Second, articulating woman as what she is not in relation to man involves an implicit centring of man as the “measure of all things” (Braidotti 2017, 2), the unifying format of all identities. De
Beauvoir’s critical understanding of the dualistic construction of gender is important to this project because it reveals one of the core questions that continues to agitate many gender debates: that regardless of how gender categories are defined, they are all measured against man.
The earlier work of Joan Rivière can be connected to De Beauvoir’s ideas. Rivière (1929) posits “womanliness as a masquerade”, where femininity is a spectacular performance used to disguise more
‘masculine’, pragmatic behaviours. Central to these articulations is the notion that the category of woman is a reactionary product of society, constructed in opposition to man, and a set of existing ideas that, when internalised and then performed, (re)produce the gender of woman. This
Gender and the Fashion Model in History 49
then frames gender not as an innate or natural function of the sexed body, but as a cultural construction repeated through learned behaviours of performance. Thus, normative gender is reproduced in subtle and insidious ways. Behavioural and aesthetic norms are internalised and reproduced cyclically, from one generation to the next, resulting in what we understand as ‘man’ and ‘woman’. These norms are reiterated constantly in society: through family, education, media content, legislation and all means of cultural content.
De Beauvoir’s important contribution to gender discourse became the launching pad for the second wave of feminism, and inspired significant feminist scholarship that would emerge decades later. In the
1960s and 1970s, activist movements fought for legislative equality for women in areas such as employment, reproductive rights and education.
Women’s sexuality was a key issue for the second wave, with a new era of women’s sexual liberation fortifying in the early 1960s. The second wave of the feminist movement politicised gender with questions pertaining to gender differences and patriarchal conditions of equality.
The momentum it created propelled the rise of Women and Gender
Studies as a scholarly area of teaching and research (Evans and Williams
2013, 217). Feminist scholarship from this period critiqued and interrogated the category of woman, the lived experience of being gendered woman and the patriarchal systems of modern societies.
Through both the shifting of philosophical debate in the academy and the ongoing activist efforts of the second wave, feminist claims were
Gender and the Fashion Model in History 50
legitimised and began to affect cultural and legislative systems.
Consequently, women beyond the front lines of feminism felt the effects of these changes, and began to reimagine what it meant to be socialised as ‘woman’.
While gender only became an area of philosophical inquiry in the twentieth century, fashion as an industry has a much longer and deeply gendered history. The fashion industry is a highly feminised business
(Craik 1994) populated by those other to heterosexual men. In fact, some scholars describe the fashion industry in terms of an inverted gender hierarchy, noting how women and queer men have traditionally held the power (Entwistle and Mears 2012). This is an inversion of broader society, which can be described as a heterosexist patriarchy.
Similarly, Alison Bancroft (2014) describes fashion as an inherently queer medium whose aesthetic codes of gender can be intentionally interfered with. Bancroft explains that because fashion constitutes the physical building blocks of gender, it is not only central to the aesthetic definition of gender, but, in the very same way, can be used to reveal gender as construction and performance, and blur its boundaries.
However, the internal gendered hierarchy of the fashion industry contrasts with its external management, or its systems of financial wealth and ownership. In the context of the increasingly globalised production of fashion, “it is women, predominantly, who bear the brunt of harsh industrial systems of production” (Entwistle 2015, 26), whereas
Gender and the Fashion Model in History 51
the majority of the luxury fashion industry is owned by men— specifically, the multinational conglomerates that dominate the industry.
These include Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton SE (LVMH), headed by chief executive officer (CEO) Bernard Arnault; Kering, whose CEO and chairman is François-Henri Pinault; and the Inditex group, best known for its Spanish fast fashion label Zara and owned by Amancio Ortega. The men holding these positions of power are among the wealthiest in the world. This means that despite perceptions of the fashion industry as the domain of women, its feminisation does not directly translate to the financial empowerment of those othered by heterosexist patriarchy.
The relationship between fashion and gender is further intensified in the fashion-modelling industry, as fashion models are seen to perpetuate and uphold traditional gender constructs. Mears (2011, 16) argues that fashion modelling is “the professionalisation of gender performance”, and is hence is a “prime site to see the construction of masculinity and femininity, as well race, sexuality, and class”. In fashion modelling, many theorists contend that the fashion model’s work is a performance of gender that could be seen as a mediation of social gender roles—as “prescription(s) for masculinity and femininity” (Mears
2011, 16) and the “technological body of the Western consumer” (Craik
1994, 76). Mears argues that the fashion model in its very function represents how men and women should look, and that the gap between these beauty ideals and the reality of gendered bodies is what drives consumerism. Fashion models mediate gender ideals and a bodily
Gender and the Fashion Model in History 52
aesthetic via their consumption and presentation of selves. As Hancock and Karaminas (2014, 270) explain, “Advertising depicts shifts in modes and models of identity and not only provides a vehicle by which producers can sell a product but also serves as a site of production for purchasable socially desirable bodies and identities”. Therefore, fashion models are sites for the production and display of idealised bodily aesthetics determined by broader cultural values, and inherently linked to social attitudes towards gender.
In particular, the female fashion model has been theorised as a tool for ‘teaching’ gender to consumers. Craik (1994) argues that in visual culture, the female fashion model teaches women “techniques of femininity”. This specific notion of the fashion model who teaches techniques of femininity arises from De Lauretis’ (1987, 19) theory of
‘technologies of gender’:
the construction of gender goes on today through the various technologies of gender (e.g., cinema) and institutional discourses (e.g., theory) with power to control the field of social meaning and thus produce, promote, and “implant” representations of gender.
Within the visual culture of fashion, these technologies of gender—or, in the case of female fashion models, ‘techniques of femininity’—can often be interpreted as having a negative impact on women’s identity, particularly in terms of unattainable beauty and body ideals, as well as embodying moralistic positions about behaviour and vanity. These negative associations are most commonly linked to female fashion
Gender and the Fashion Model in History 53
models and women consumers, as the fashion model has been a tool used to promote feminine consumption since its inception (Craik 1994).
According to Craik (1994), the fashion model emerged alongside the cultural feminisation of consumption in the nineteenth century, a development that also led to the profession of fashion modelling becoming associated almost exclusively with women. While the very first models were men who paraded tailoring in Paris (Evans 2013, 12), by the end of the nineteenth century, “most fashion models were female: the profession had become feminized” (Evans 2013, 12). By the 1890s, department stores catered to the female shopper by designing gendered, seductive, feminine spaces and publishing advertising that encouraged women to acquire commodities to fulfil their sense of self. At around the same time, the fashion show emerged as a spectacle designed specifically for the female customer. Hence, the fashion model progressed as a cultural figure that framed products and experiences for women through the aesthetics of the homogenised model body (Evans
2013, 1). Modelling was gradually recognised as a profession for women over the first half of the 1900s, and with this professionalisation came the recognition of fashion models as icons of beauty and feminine ideals, even though they initially held little social status (Craik 1994, 77).
Throughout the twentieth century, changes in the bodily aesthetics of fashion models closely represented changing attitudes towards what constituted ‘ideal’ feminine beauty. This was directly linked to social perceptions of women and femininity more broadly—therefore, the
Gender and the Fashion Model in History 54
fashion model can be read as something of a social barometer in relation to questions of gender. To highlight the connection between aesthetic ideals, feminine beauty and gender, I next give a brief overview of three significant shifts in the ideal body aesthetic of models in the twentieth century to reveal them as inextricable from the social conditions of gender: the new American model of the 1920s, the return to traditional femininity post-World War II and the new, youthful model of the 1960s.
Figure 3.1: Edward Steichen (American, 1879‒1973), Marion Morehouse in Madeleine Cheruit (French, 1887‒1936). Vogue 1 May 1927
Within several decades of their emergence in the late nineteenth century, the bodily aesthetic of fashion models changed drastically alongside cultural shifts aligned with both the streamlined aesthetics of modernism and the disruptive social identities associated with modernity more broadly. Evans (2005) discusses how, in the context of early twentieth-century modernism, the new American look of the model became popularised by designer Jean Patou, who recruited foreign
Gender and the Fashion Model in History 55
models to display his work in Europe. This look was defined by tall, slim and athletic models, which contrasted with the more feminine European models who had initially dominated the profession. Patou’s models aligned with the key cultural icon of the 1920s, the flapper. Figure 3.1 shows French model Marion Morehouse embodying the flapper aesthetic: short, minimalist hairstyle, a straight silhouette formed without restrictive undergarments, a dropped waist and a comparatively short hemline, all of which contributed to this cool, sophisticated and modern look—one that did not emphasise the feminine ideal, but instead borrowed aspects of masculine dress. This posed a challenge to existing notion of normative femininity, and simultaneously established a new feminine ideal. The straight-silhouetted and loose-fitting style was a symbolic response to women’s desire for freedom and culturally enacted “as a visual fantasy of liberation” (Roberts 1993, 661). The loose-style garments promoted movement, recasting feminine beauty outside the tropes of traditional, corseted feminine beauty. At the time, this aesthetic was provocative for many, and made visible women’s changing social desires. On the political capacity of the flapper’s fashion,
Roberts (1993, 683) makes an argument that is central to this project:
Considering postwar fashion as a political gesture raises two important sets of questions. First, did women's participation in this visual fantasy of liberation produce any real political effects? Obviously, to look emancipated was not to be emancipated. Since the illusion of freedom could as much undermine as reinforce a liberated self-image, participation in this visual fantasy represented a political risk.
Gender and the Fashion Model in History 56
The notion of fashion as a “visual fantasy of liberation” in a politically tumultuous time, and participation in fashion as a conscious “political risk” (Roberts 1993) is a notion this project seeks to adopt and extend. It sits at the heart of the questions of why consumers might adopt new fashion, why fashion has social and political capacity and how fashion models have a politicised visibility within broader social politics.
The post-World War II period saw the popular bodily aesthetic return to a more traditional feminine ideal. This reflected a broader shift back to traditional family values and reinforced traditional gender roles in the aftermath of wartime instability. As embodied by the image in
Figure 3.2, The twelve most photographed models, taken by Irving Penn in 1947, the fashion models of the mid-twentieth century depicted the elegance and finery of couture, which in a postwar climate had returned to cinched waists, delicate shoulders and a highly dressed and mature glamour. Following the release of Dior’s New Look in 1947, ‘the golden age of couture’ was defined by the poised, elegant and refined model, which reflected the “ultra-sophisticated attitude of the moment” (Koda and Yohannan 2009, 28). However, it is also important to note that this
‘return’ to what is often referred to as an hourglass aesthetic was in fact a highly modernised and ‘streamlined’ iteration, and did not simply reflect a return to outdated ideas of femininity. Maynard (1995, 43) argues that “women were vehemently urged to transform their clothed appearance in accordance with a set of quite traditional body ideals and signifiers of femininity”, but these ideals were rebranded in Dior’s New
Gender and the Fashion Model in History 57
Look as progressive and modern. The look promoted a narrative of liberation that was partly connected to notions of fetishisation of the body and sexual empowerment (Maynard 1995, 47).
Figure 3.2: Irving Penn (American, b.1917) The twelve most photographed models Vogue 1 May 1947; Meg Mundy, Marilyn Ambrose, Helen Bennett, Dana Jenney, Betty Mclauchlen, Lisa Fonssagrives, Lily Carlson, Dorian Leigh, Andrea Johnson, Elizabeth Gibbons, Kay Hernan and Muriel Maxwell
Maynard (1995, 45) posits that “historically accepted markers of femininity, including wasp waists, high heels and full skirts, were reformulated, 'fetishized' and marketed through a new and opulent media language of desire”. Although the extreme dimensions of Dior’s
New Look hourglass shape echoed Victorian-era silhouettes, the mid- century aesthetic was less reliant on ornate surface decorations and more interested in design and structure. Iconic mid-century models such as Lisa Fonssagrives-Penn were tall and very slim, and their hourglass silhouette was achieved via structural padding. Fashion models of this
Gender and the Fashion Model in History 58
period presented both an “artificial, imposed curvaciousness” through fashion and “a physical body ideal” (Maynard 1995, 46) that was slim, elegant and highly disciplined. In this way, fashion models’ normatively feminine bodily aesthetics were celebrated and hence mediated as legitimate and desirable identities.
Figure 3.3: Twiggy in Yves Saint Laurent for Vogue April 1967, shot by Bert Stern (American, b. 1929)
In the 1960s, the cultural climate shifted dramatically. Koda and
Yohannan (2009, 66) suggest there was a reaction against the “strict moral codes of the 1950s” that was “underscored by deeply rooted socio-sexual and economic revolutions” (66) and resulted in aesthetics moving away from the highly formal and grown-up woman and towards youth culture. The poster girl for this change in aesthetics was British model Lesley Hornby, aka Twiggy. Many considered Twiggy a “breach in the aesthetics of high fashion” (Koda and Yohannan 2009, 73), as her adolescent physique and boyish haircut perfectly carried the youthful
Gender and the Fashion Model in History 59
and often androgynous styles of the 1960s, as shown in Figure 3.3.
According to Craik (1994), Twiggy had a highly influential look. Her then- new boyish, cool and youthful version of femininity was one of the sites of the great aesthetic changes (and beauty ideals) heralded by the
1960s.
Similar to the complex cultural connotations of Dior’s New Look,
Twiggy represented an aesthetic that was more nuanced than simply youthful femininity. In contrast to mid-century fashion models, who generally came from upper-class families, Twiggy came from a working- class background and represented a significant shift in the representation of glamour and desire. Benn DeLibero (1994, 46) contends that “cultural industry made Twiggy into a myth about the wonderfully transformative properties not of politics or social conscience, but of fashion and style”. Further to this, the youthful and straight-silhouetted femininity Twiggy embodied had aesthetic and conceptual parallels to the 1930s flapper fashion model. The look of
1960s fashion models, embodied by Twiggy, was both modern and nostalgic in a way that repackaged rebellious interwar femininity into a futuristic and energetic aesthetic. In this way, it can be argued that while fashion models embody a cyclical movement between traditional and progressive gender ideals, their aesthetic cycles tell a story of nuanced aesthetic and social progression.
Gender and the Fashion Model in History 60
According to Calefato (2004, 62), the fashion model is a “semiotic subject in process” that represents society and its shifts on a broader scale. This process with semiotic value evolves alongside history, and in this sense, the fashion model is a barometer for social ideals. As is evident from these three historical examples, the changing aesthetics of fashion models in the early to mid-twentieth century represented changing social attitudes towards women and gender, but in a complex and historically self-referential way. Fashion models did not simply reflect or embody cultural ideals of gender—they also perpetuated them and contributed to the cultural shifts they are said to embody. They did this through presenting new fashion languages that posed “political risk”
(Roberts 1994, 683) in evolving political climates.
Despite the variation of cultural and social changes reflected and perpetuated by fashion models, some core aspects of the idealised identities they represented remained the same throughout the twentieth century. As Hollander (1993, 155‒156) explains in Seeing through clothes:
all the varieties of female desirability conceived by the twentieth century seemed ideally housed in a thin, resilient, and bony body. Healthy innocence, sexual restlessness, creative zest, practical competence, even morbid but poetic obsessiveness and intelligence—all seemed appropriate in size ten. During the six decades following the First World War, styles in gesture, posture, and erotic emphasis have undergone many changes, but the basically slim female ideal has been maintained.
Gender and the Fashion Model in History 61
This argument can be extrapolated to the idea that the “slim female ideal” was also a white, heteronormative one. At different points in history, the fashion model has visually and socially represented the ideal femininity of a specific period—but these aesthetics remained within exclusive, commodifiable boundaries, defined by cultural whiteness and heteronormativity. The limitations of the fashion model’s visibility, including a preoccupation with thinness and cultural whiteness, is discussed further in the next chapter.
Modelling Masculinity
While female fashion models have historically been read as symbols of dominant ideals of femininity and as teachers of femininity, male models have not consistently been read in the same way, and it is worth taking a slight detour in my discussion here to make this point with an overview of the gendered history of the male fashion model. This discussion is essential because my case studies demonstrate that genderqueer models explore both masculine and feminine ideals, challenging or reiterating them simultaneously or alternately. Male models’ performance of masculinity has historically occupied a precarious position. In a pragmatic sense, this is a result of the emergence and progression of the industry as one targeted towards female consumption. However, in a broader social sense, this speaks to the rigidity of gendered behaviours, particularly in relation to performance of self and fashion. The very function of the fashion
Gender and the Fashion Model in History 62
model—which is to perform fashion and be viewed—sits at odds with the dominant culture of hegemonic masculinity.
Despite early appearances, male models gradually began to reappear more consistently in the mid-twentieth century, with the first menswear show reportedly held in Italy in 1951 (Chenoune 1993). Over the next several decades, male models were used in commercial fashion advertising via photograph or fashion illustration and, similar to female models, these commercial depictions of men reflected the prevailing aesthetics of masculinity of the time. The appearance of male models in runway shows was less common, but did occur sporadically. It was not until the 1980s that male models emerged as more serious stakeholders in the world of fashion. In this period, the ‘New Man’ represented the emergence of the new, active male consumer. The sexualised, muscular frame of male models at the time mediated a new, sexualised aesthetic of masculinity in consumer culture (Hancock and Karaminas 2014, 270).
This came in the wake of social movements for LGBTQ+ rights in the
1970s. As Hancock and Karaminas (2014, 270) explain, the rise of the new men’s style magazines such as Gentleman’s Quarterly (GQ) and
Arena were a platform for these new kinds of images, and the aesthetics of this new imagery were greatly influenced by the visual codes of pornography, particularly the increasingly visible genre of gay pornography. The male model’s body started shifting towards homoerotic imagery in mainstream media, which fetishised sleek, young bodies to appeal to a broad audience at a basic level, and to the
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“common narcissism” of consumers in the desire for youthful beauty
(Hancock and Karaminas 2014, 78). However, in the 1980s, the AIDS epidemic engendered panic in the gay community and broader society, and forced masculine ideals even further towards the healthy, strong body as an aesthetic strategy for young men to distance themselves from the disease that wasted away bodies (Hancock and Karaminas 2014, 78).
The new, masculine body ideal depicted by male models was a
“relatively uniform hegemonic body type: muscular” (Barry 2014, 277).
This muscular aesthetic pioneered by male models in the 1980s remained dominant until the end of the twentieth century.
The fact that male models did not gain legitimacy until the 1980s— and that, when they did, their work was read as homoerotic—speaks to the male model’s complex relationship with gender. The categorisation of hypermasculine aesthetics as homoerotic may also be linked to deep- seated cultural notions of masculinity. According to Halberstam (1998), unlike femininity, masculinity is perceived as natural and lacking any performative aspect. In this way, male models—especially the highly sexualised models of the 1980s—were read as performing a queered version of masculinity, despite the fact that all gender is performative
(Butler [1990] 1999). That is, so rigid is the social perception of exhibitionism as feminine and the gaze as masculine that it is almost impossible to read male models as anything but a queer performance.
Further, male models can be interpreted as queering the function of the
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fashion model because of the reversed gender power dynamics in the fashion industry.
While the gendered experience of a female model is largely consistent with the outside world in terms of their being required to act normatively feminine, the male model is a subversion of traditional gender roles, because he becomes the object of beauty (Entwistle and
Mears 2012, 321); in this way, “male models strategically ‘drag up’ at work” (Entwistle and Mears 2012, 321). Male models “parody heterosexuality or homosexuality” (Entwistle and Mears 2012, 321) and
“‘do’ gender in strategic ways” (Entwistle and Mears 2012, 321) in the context of a female-dominated industry. In doing so, they “deploy non- normative gender and sexual identities that, while temporary and limited to the workplace, have the potential to upset heteronormative discourses” (Entwistle and Mears 2012, 321). In her 2004 study,
Entwistle discusses how many male models who identified as heterosexual felt the need to queer their sexuality to advance in the profession: “these men have to adapt to a habitus which has traditionally been both ‘feminine’ and ‘queer’”(73). Entwistle explains:
Unlike other display work men do that involves being looked at (such as dancing or acting, for example) modelling is work that has men solely as objects of display—they merely have to “be on time,” “walk,” and “wear clothes” but nothing more. This apparent lack of activity, the assumed passivity of modelling, make it seem an inappropriate job for a man since a “real” man is supposed to “do” rather than “appear” (Berger 1972) (56).
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As expressed by Entwistle, male fashion models are often regarded as not performing real work and portrayed as the airheads of the industry.
Female models are not only paid far more, but valued more highly by society for their aesthetic labour. Entwistle (2006, 5) suggests this is linked to “the closer association of women with the body and the higher cultural value placed on female ‘beauty’”. Culturally, femininity is associated with a concern for appearance and beauty; consequently, female fashion models are validated by society for fulfilling that role.
This biological essentialism is in turn applied to the male fashion model, who is seen as vacuous and vain. In reality, the male fashion model negotiates a position within the feminine world of fashion and must simultaneously maintain a masculine identity. In spite of this, Entwistle
(2004, 73) argues, the growth of male fashion modelling challenges “the straitjacket of conventional white masculinity” by including men in fashion and validating modelling as a career option for men.
The Fashion Model at the End of the Twentieth Century
In the 1980s, the fashion model reached new heights of celebrity and commercial power via the group dubbed ‘supermodels’. This term was coined to describe a new kind of highly visible and highly paid model who was in demand on the catwalk and in magazine editorials and advertising. The definitive characteristics of the original supermodels were their highly individual personas (which afforded them a point of difference), inflated market value and imposing physical appearance.
Koda and Yohannan (2009, 142) suggest that the supermodel’s ideal
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body was “womanly slenderness of aerobicized suppleness”, an aesthetic that promoted a healthy body and strong feminine beauty (as seen in
Figure 3.4). As Soley-Beltran (2012, 101) explains, “the appearance of models’ very high fees, coincided with the worldwide recession at the end of the 1980s”. As icons of consumption, supermodels embodied the upwardly mobile yuppie and the new power and sexuality of businesswomen, paradoxically expressed through the cult of the body revealed by sensual and fitted clothing. The flashy glamazon became associated with the kitsch aesthetics of Italian designer Gianni Versace; designers such as Versace used the supermodels en masse to create overt aesthetics of excess beauty (Buckley and Gundle 2000, 331) and mediate a highly sexualised ideal of gendered beauty.
Figure 3.4: Versace Spring 1994 campaign, shot by Richard Avedon, featuring Christy Turlington, Nadja Auermann, Cindy Crawford, Stephanie Seymour and Claudia Schiffer
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While some models of the mid-twentieth century (such as Lisa
Fonssagrives-Penn, Dorian Leigh and Dior’s house model of the 1950s,
Lucky) had been notable in their own right, the supermodels reached new heights of fame through sheer mass exposure, partly because of the expansion of fashion houses into multi-tiered companies with layers of concession labels and diversified product lines. The supermodels were
“surrounded by (and instrumental in creating) a media buzz” that soon went on to “eclipse the very world of fashion that had brought them into existence” (Koda and Yohannan 2009, 135), propelling them to the forefront of the growing cult of celebrity. Radner and Smith (2013, 281) explain that by the beginning of the 1990s, the fashion model had reached the height of celebrity status, as “fashion became another dimension of the broader domain of celebrity culture”.
For both male and female models, the health-focused aesthetics of the 1980s were followed by a reactionary aesthetic of very young, waiflike and less traditionally glamorous-looking models. Dubbed ‘heroin chic’ in popular media, this look depicted very slim and sickly-appearing models, often photographed in gritty editorial shoots set in mundane everyday environments—a kind of antiglamour that coincided with the grunge music movement, known for its casual androgyny. In contrast to the supermodels of the 1980s, new models began appearing who represented broader definitions of beauty while maintaining established industry requirements such as specific measurements, a strong bone structure and symmetrical features. Exemplifying this was supermodel
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Kristen McMenamy, who, despite her unconventional looks, was pegged
“the new face of beauty for the 90s” by Karl Lagerfeld (quoted in Mair
1993). Aesthetic movements in 1990s fashion design, including deconstructivism and minimalism, also pushed at the “outer perimeters of fashion’s idiosyncratic aesthetic” (Koda and Yohannan 2009, 195). At the time, avant-garde designers (most notably Maison Martin Margiela) avoided using supermodels to “underscore theoretical concepts of their work that might be subverted by the model’s celebrity” (Koda and
Yohannan 2009, 195). Their use of alternative-looking models mediated not only their brands’ edginess, but also an antagonism towards mainstream aesthetics. As Mair (1993) noted in i-D magazine, “if fashion is an acute barometer of social change, then its fluctuation between sobriety and excess reflects the turmoil of the times”, and this extreme transition from glamorous supermodels to unconventional and “weird- looking” (Mair 1993) models speaks to the drastic cultural shifts that underscored this period. While initially, this movement away from the aesthetics of the supermodels was challenging and reactionary, both
‘unusual beauty’ and ‘anonymous beauty’ remained prominent aesthetics in the fashion model industry into the twenty-first century.
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Figure 3.5: Calvin Klein CK one fragrance advertising campaign, Steven Meisel 1994
The 1990s ushered in diversified representations of racial and gendered beauty among fashion models, but the model body type remained homogenised across the industry: a slim, youthful, and androgynous aesthetic. Like the models of the 1920s, this look mediated an antagonism towards traditional standards of gendered beauty reproduced by the 1950s fashion model. The heroin-chic aesthetic of the
1990s rendered the model body, both male and female, slimmer and straighter than ever, with an androgynous and youthful aesthetic exemplified by Calvin Klein campaigns of the 1990s. These campaigns are one of the first instances of the fashion model representing diverse gender expressions beyond the hegemonic binary as central to mainstream consumer culture. In particular, the 1994 advertising campaign for the CK One fragrance (see Figure 3.5) features models of various gender identities, many styled in ways that diverge from traditional gender representations (e.g., women with clipped hair, men with long hair and Jenny Shimizu crouching shirtless), which plays to the
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branding of the fragrance, designed to be unisex and minimalist. Other images from this campaign similarly blur the subjects’ sexuality, many positioned in close interactions that are ostensibly nonheterosexual, further challenging heteronormative representations and mediating a queered version of gender. Here, we see the convergence between male and female representations in fashion imagery as an industry-driven phenomenon. While these images can be read as socially progressive, they can alternatively be read in terms of market expansion to multi- gendered consumers—ultimately, they are both, and their dual function is central to the tensions that can be found at the heart of genderqueer fashion models in the twenty-first century.
As female models ostensibly moved away from traditional ideals of beauty, the aesthetics of male models also underwent significant changes. In contrast to the muscular body type pioneered by male models of the 1980s, the late 1990s and early 2000s saw “a shift in the representation of the male body” towards a “skinny male silhouette”
(Barry 2014, 277) championed by designers such as Raf Simmons and
Hedi Slimane. Nick Rees-Roberts (2013, 7) contends that the new, slim male model begin to appear in Slimane’s work as a “conscious reworking of masculinity, replacing virile men with skinny boys”. Rees-Roberts argues that the new silhouette connected to broader popular culture revivals of English mod style, and Slimane reportedly took inspiration from musician and then-boyfriend of Kate Moss, Pete Doherty (Rees-
Roberts 2013, 10). Although in some ways, this new, slim masculine
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figure could be seen as subverting the hypermasculine aesthetics of the
1980s, Barry argues (2014) that ultimately, the shift resulted in a splitting of male model aesthetics. While “many fashion brands feature the slender ideal, muscular male models have not been eradicated”
(Barry 2014, 277); Mears (2011) posits that these differing aesthetics can be classified into a binary of editorial and commercial looks.
A Conceptual Shift Away from the Gender Binary
The expansion of gendered aesthetic types seen in the fashion- modelling industry in the 1990s was underscored by significant developments in gender discourse in the latter part of the twentieth century. Under the banner of what became known as queer theory, key texts from the French philosopher Michel Foucault and American gender theorist Judith Butler spearheaded scholarship that collectively sought to reject both the gender binary and gender identity as natural and stable, while simultaneously interrogating the privileging of any specific identity category in social systems of power. Foucault’s The history of sexuality (1978, 1985, 196) reveals sexuality as discursive and as a social historical construct. His work details the social systems of power and language as historically specific mechanisms that determined the reproduction of heteronormative norms. As McNay (1992, 3) suggests,
Foucault’s work presents “a theory of power and its relation to the body which feminists have used to explain aspects of women’s oppression”.
Foucault’s influence on gender discourse was to offer a conceptual framework through which gender as a system of power could be
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critiqued, and specifically to reveal sexuality as a construct. Following in this spirit of interrogation and philosophical debate, Judith Butler produced her influential works in the early 1990s, adopting a
Foucauldian, poststructuralist style of inquiry. Butler’s concepts of discursive sex, gender performativity, the heterosexual matrix and troubling gender underpin the philosophical changes to gender theory and are central to framing the conceptual tensions at the heart of this analysis of genderqueer models.
Butler’s seminal work Gender trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (1990) made a significant departure from broader feminist thought by challenging the validity of the category of woman. Although this category, and indeed all identity categories, can be useful in arguments for equality and in creating protected spaces for the oppressed group, Butler argues that its rigidity further exacerbates the issues feminism attempts to resolve. She explains that “by conforming to a requirement of representational politics that feminism articulate a stable subject, feminism thus opens itself to charges of gross misrepresentation” (Butler [1990] 1999, 6‒7). Butler argues that “the construction and category of woman as a coherent and stable subject” only works towards a “regulation and reification of gender relations”, and suggests that the category of woman can “achieve stability and coherence only in the context of the heterosexual matrix” (7). Further to this, Butler contends that the category of woman assumes the shared, lived experience of all women as defined by the connecting factor of
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biology. Similarly, theorists such as bell hooks (1981, 1984, 2000) argue that this assumed lived experience of all women ignores the intersecting oppressions of those enforced by race, class and other power structures.
The idea that women are united as a single group across these structures suggests that their connected identity is centred on biology—exactly the crux of the sex/gender distinction feminists have long sought to make.
The proposition that categorising women as a discrete group actually undermined feminism’s aim challenged and outraged some feminist gender theorists. Further to this, Butler proposed that all categorisations of identity work to instil the systems of power via which they are defined. In proposing all categories of identity as a construct, Butler’s work reveals the structures within which these categories are conceived.
Building on feminist positions derived from Rivière’s femininity as masquerade and De Beauvoir’s femininity as psychosocial construction is
Butler’s notion of performativity. Gender performativity describes how gender is instilled, internalised, learnt and projected subconsciously by individuals in line with our socialisation (Butler [1990] 1999). Butler also establishes the difference between ‘performed’ and ‘performative’ gender, the former being a conscious, decided act of performance
(exemplified by drag, which reveals the constructed nature of gender), and the latter being the nature by which gender appears through repetitive, temporal activities that become naturalised. Butler ([1990]
1999, xv) explains, “performativity is not a singular act, but a repetition and a ritual, which achieves its effects through its naturalization in the
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context of a body, understood, in part, as a culturally sustained temporal duration”. Butler posits that these naturalised, repeated behaviours are gender, which we read and substantiate through a pre-existing understanding of gender; they are “compelled by the regulatory practices of gender coherence” (34). In this way, “gender is performative—that is, constituting the identity it is purported to be”
(Butler [1990] 1999, 34). Butler argues that “gender is always a doing, though not a doing by a subject who might be said to pre-exist the deed”
(34). In her preface to the second edition of Gender trouble, Butler further clarifies her articulation of performativity, arguing that “the performativity of gender revolves around this metalepsis, the way in which the anticipation of a gendered essence produces that which it posits as outside itself” (xv).
Along with these significant concepts are Butler’s writings on sex as a discursive entity. Drawing on Foucault, Butler (1993) challenges the notion of sex seen as natural and inherently biological. She argues that like gender, sex is also culturally constructed, not the least because the category of sex did not exist prior to language. In Bodies that matter,
Butler (1993) links the materialisation of sex to the performativity of gender, explaining how the notion of sex does not exist a priori. Rather, sex is produced via the existing discourse of gender. That is, while earlier feminist articulations of gender relied on its distinction from sex,
Butler argues that sex is a causal category of gender. She explains that the binary understanding of sex is furthered by an implicit cultural bias
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in science and fields dealing with facts. She points out that like any field of inquiry, science and medicine are not immune to the effects of gender discourse, where sex has historically been understood as binary and a scientific fact, with gender a causal result of it. Butler’s notion of discursive sex reveals both sex and gender as social constructions, thus undermining key unifying ideals of feminist movements.
The reconceptualisation of sex as discursive played a key part in
Butler’s ([1990] 1999) theory of the heterosexual matrix, via which she posits that all identity categories are constructed and perceived as natural. The heterosexual matrix is the “grid of cultural intelligibility through which bodies, genders, and desires are naturalized” (Butler
[1990] 1999, 208). She draws on Adrienne Rich’s complementary notion of “compulsory heterosexuality” (1980) and Monique Wittig’s notion of
“heterosexual contract” (1980) to define the heterosexual matrix as:
a hegemonic discursive/epistemic model of gender intelligibility that assumes that for bodies to cohere and make sense there must be a stable sex expressed through a stable gender (masculine expresses male, feminine expresses female) that is oppositional and hierarchically defined through the compulsory act of heterosexuality (Butler 1990 [1999], 208).
That is, the heterosexual matrix is the social system where categories of identity are formed and perceived as stable and natural based in seemingly universal assumptions: that sex is biologically determined and binary; that gender naturally follows sex and is binary; and that sexuality is desire and attraction for the opposite sex. Generally, sexuality is also
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perceived as a binary of heterosexual/homosexual because of the rigidity of the gender binary. A key part of Butler’s conception of the heterosexual matrix is that all identity categories are discursive, including sex (which is largely theorised as natural and binary), and therefore all can be conceived as constructed and culturally specific, but not necessarily ‘natural’. Butler ([1990] 1999, 46) considers both sex and gender “regulatory fictions that consolidate and centralize the convergent power regimes of masculine and heterosexist oppression”, and that therefore reinforce the heterosexual matrix.
Finally, Butler’s notion of ‘troubling gender’ is a proposition this project seeks to adopt as an interpretive lens. Here, it is used to establish the function of the genderqueer fashion model. Butler ([1990]
1999, 46) concludes the opening chapter of Gender trouble by proposing troubling gender as,
subverting and displacing those naturalized and reified notions of gender that support masculine hegemony and heterosexist power, to make gender trouble … through the mobilisation, subversive confusion, and proliferation of precisely those constitutive categories that seek to keep gender in its place by posturing as the foundational illusions of identity (added emphasis).
Butler ([1990] 1999, 46) suggests that acts of “subversive confusion”— that is, the troubling of gender—will effectively undermine and shake up the rigid dominance of heteronormative gender and sexuality. While she offers the example of drag as potentially subversive, she also explains
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that this troubling may be enacted in many forms of day-to-day lived experience, potentially taking shape in ways at which she does not seek to guess in her work. She asserts that the question is not whether to perform gender, because we all perform it already, but instead how that performance has potential to challenge norms: “the task is not whether to repeat, but how to repeat or, indeed, to repeat, and, through a radical proliferation of gender, to displace the very gender norms that enable the repetition itself” (Butler [1990] 1999, 202‒203, original emphasis).
Highly pertinent to case studies of genderqueer models is the fact that Butler ([1990] 1999) presents the notion of gender trouble as a conceptual strategy that is potentially achievable in one’s own immediate realm. She proposes that subversive gender practices have great social potential because they actively challenge and work to deteriorate gender norms:
The loss of gender norms would have the effect of proliferating gender configurations, destabilizing substantive identity, and depriving the naturalizing narratives of compulsory heterosexuality of their central protagonists: ‘man’ and ‘woman’ (Butler 1990 [1999], 200).
In Media, gender and identity (2008), Gauntlett summarises Butler’s call to trouble gender as a “manifesto for radical change” (152). Responding to criticisms that Butler does not explicitly detail how “people should resist genders, or cause ‘gender trouble’” (Gauntlett 2008, 154) by
Kaplan (1992) and Deveaux (1994), Gauntlett extends on Butler’s
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proposition by offering contemporary contextual examples of how artists have troubled gender in the media. For example, Gauntlett argues that gender theorists have looked to artists who continually reinvent their image, such as Madonna, as prime examples. Madonna’s career has been read as blurring gender stereotypes, transgressing notions of sexuality and destabilising notions of fixed identity categories (Schwichtenberg
1993; Lloyd 1993; Frank and Smith 1993, Faith 1997; Brooks 1997). While
Butler proposes the use of gender trouble at an everyday level,
Gauntlett suggests that the troubling of gender at a popular media level offers broader “‘proliferation’ of identities” (155), and works alongside personal practice to “destabilise the taken-for-granted assumptions about the supposedly binary divide between female and male, masculinity and femininity, gay and straight” (155). In this sense, the notion of ‘gender trouble’, with its potential to destabilise structural heteronormativity, is an ideal interpretive lens through which genderqueer fashion models may be analysed. Just as media figures from other creative fields have been read as challenging heteronormativity, so too can genderqueer fashion models be read as such—perhaps even more, so as their unique gendered function in visual culture specifically connects the reproduction of heteronormative aesthetics to commercial success and visibility.
Queer Theory
Fortifying these emergent ideas around the construction of identity categories such as sexuality and gender, queer theory emerged as an
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academic discourse underpinned by activism. In 1990, Teresa De Lauretis first coined the term ‘queer theory’ as a part of a conference and proceeding collection of papers focusing on lesbian and gay sexualities.
Taking the lead from Butler and Foucault’s redefinition of sex, gender and sexuality as social constructions, the new body of academic scholarship that emerged in the 1990s moved beyond gender to question all stable categories of identity. According to Jagose (1994) and Goldberg
(2016), queer theory aimed to engage multiple ideas about sex, gender and sexuality, as well as debunk the supposed ‘naturalness’ of sexuality and question even the most basic categories of identity such as ‘man’ and ‘woman’. Espousing Butler’s concept of the heteronormative matrix, academia turned its attention to queer as the theorisation of the ‘other’ to heteronormative. Queer theory challenges the privileging of identities, as Landau (2012, 295) explains:
In general, queer theorists challenge modernist notions of identity as coherent, stable, and natural, and subsequent categories and binaries such as gender/sex, masculinity/femininity, male/female, and heterosexuality/homosexuality, by positing the multiplicity, fluidity, and ambiguity of gender and sexuality.
In challenging the notion of fixed and stable identity, queer theory draws explicitly on Foucault’s (1988) concept of “technologies of the self”, which describes the practice of internalising social norms and reproducing them via various techniques for the individual to present a palatable identity.
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As per gender studies, both scholarly research and political activism gave queer theory its momentum in its early phases, generating an
“activist-intellectual synergy” within queer discourse (Goldberg 2016,
915). Across these arenas, adopting the word queer was a deliberate reappropriation of a pejorative word historically used to “abuse, shame and even create notions of deviant sexual identity” (Goldberg 2016,
915), with activists reclaiming it to challenge categories of gender and sexuality. In scholarly literature, the word ‘queer’ came to represent a disruption of processes grounded in heteronormative systems. As Jagose
(1996, 3) explains, queer “describes those gestures of analytical models which dramatise incoherencies in the allegedly stable relations between chromosomal sex, gender and sexual desire”. Queer has become something of a “catch-all identity marker” (Goldberg 2016, 915), because queer theory “relies less on building or protecting a specific identity label than on critiquing heteronormative values and assumptions”
(Goldberg 2016, 916).
In this project, ‘queer’ is used as an identity marker and ‘queering’ as an active verb. The term ‘queer’, or, more specifically, ‘genderqueer’, is used to describe the case study subjects to clearly delineate their commercially embodied gender identities from those of the cisnormative models who dominate the industry. In addition, this project uses the term ‘queer’ to describe the processes and practices performed by genderqueer fashion models that specifically undermine, undo and challenge the fashion model’s established functions. Understanding the
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semantics of queering as an active verb is highly relevant to this project, as it posits that the fashion-modelling industry is primed to be queered because it is an institution built upon heteronormative gender ideals. As has been discussed, the functions of fashion models are theorised as reflecting, embodying and perpetuating heteronormative gender. This project contends that genderqueer fashion models queer the model’s function by disrupting the heteronormative systems of representation within which fashion models operate and that they uphold. Further, it contends that they do this through the commercial embodiment of their queer gender identities. The specific practices comprising this commercial embodiment are unpacked in the next chapter. While genderqueer fashion models are only a recent phenomenon, the social and commercial circumstances that would eventually pave the way for the emergence of genderqueer fashion models can be found in the late
1970s and 1980s, with the increased visibility of queer identities, especially at Andy Warhol’s The Factory in New York. Musicians such as
Grace Jones, drag queen Divine and writers such as Truman Capote converged upon this scene, connecting fashion with gender disruption.
These new identities were firmly established during the 1990s, fortifying queer theory and opening it up to broader society.
The Contemporary Fashion Model Emerges
This chapter concludes by returning to the history of the fashion model in the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Following the waiflike androgyny of 1990s female models, the early 2000s saw a
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reinvigoration of hyperfeminine bodily aesthetics. This return to conventional and heteronormative ideals of feminine beauty was a reactionary aesthetic in that it sought to challenge the queered gendered aesthetics of the 1990s. If heroin-chic fashion models destabilised gender norms and mediated gender beyond the traditional binary, then the 2000s sought to re-establish traditional notions of beauty, value and desirability as connected to traditional, heteronormative gender and coinciding notions of femininity. This return to heteronormative ideals is exemplified (and was perhaps propelled) by the rise in popularity of the Victoria’s Secret (VS) fashion show and catalogue. This annual event has extremely high production values, draws on multiple celebrity appearances and support, attracts high- profile sponsors and fuels its cult-like following with its absolute excess of beauty and glamour and notoriously selective physical standards for its models or ‘angels’ (Figure 3.6). This spectacle is a clear example of fashion models acting as cultural intermediaries, framing the homogenised bodily aesthetics of VS models as ‘fashionable’ and therefore valuable in consumer culture, and thus dogmatically reinforcing heteronormative ideals of femininity in a highly monetised commercial display.
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Figure 3.6: Gisele Bündchen in the 2005 Victoria’s Secret show
Collectively, the VS show models mediate highly stylised heteronormative ideals of femininity and the sexualised female body as an object of consumer culture. Although it ostensibly presents as a fashion show, few actual garments are shown at the VS event, and not much of the model’s bodies are covered; instead, what is on show is the body and beauty ideals of contemporary (US) consumer culture.
Similarly, this strategy of beautiful and sexualised model bodies has also re-emerged for the male model, with American label Abercrombie &
Fitch (A&F) and offshoot Hollister positioning ‘brand representatives’
(i.e., shirtless, muscular male models) at the entries to their stores and extensively appropriating the quasi-pornographic aesthetics of male torsos in their advertising. Hancock and Karaminas (2014, 283) explain that A&F makes these muscular bodies attainable to consumers by
“allowing customers to interact with them and have their photographs taken in the model’s embrace”. This marketing is in stark contrast to how VS employ the allure of the sexualised body. While A&F invites
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consumers to interact with the body, VS valourises these bodies as aspirational goals for consumers; both strategies function to mediate an idealised bodily aesthetic that is heavily gendered.
While the highly sexualised aesthetics of VS and A&F may sketch out a pervasive consumerist and heteronormative context of modelling in the twenty-first century, they do not represent the industry as a whole. In fact, post-2010, there has been a splintering of fashion model aesthetics. Alongside the cohort of intensely normatively feminine models, the waiflike, androgynous aesthetics of heroin-chic are equally as present, as are mid-century elegance and the youthful 1960s aesthetic. The aesthetic diversity of twenty-first century models can be linked to the postmodern aesthetic pluralism that has defined contemporary culture and fashion in the late twentieth century and early twenty-first century. Vinken (2005) argues that since the early 1970s, we have existed in an era of ‘post-fashion’, where multiple and seemingly incongruent aesthetics simultaneously contribute to the vast fabric of contemporary aesthetics. Genderqueer fashion models emerge in a context of aesthetic pluralism, wherein ‘difference’ might be both marketed as commodity and as a symbol of social progression. This point is expanded upon in Chapter 4 in relation to Braidotti’s critique of post- capitalism. However, within this aesthetic pluralism, differences of gender identity and gender expression are no more valuable than other aesthetics if they are read as just another part of the diversification process. If diverse gender identities are read simply as one of many
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aesthetic options within an aesthetic pluralism, the political significance of these gender performances is lost. Thus far, aesthetics have been discussed at length, but as Roberts (1993) suggests, the aesthetics and politics of fashion are not separate. The next chapter discusses some of the representational politics and power structures that frame genderqueer fashion models as politically loaded subjects.
Conclusion
Since their inception, fashion models have embodied, reflected and perpetuated socially dominant ideals of gender, particularly in relation to femininity. Fashion history demonstrates that this complex function is cyclical in nature, and this chapter has revealed that each cycle between traditional and progressive gender ideals is perpetuated via cultural and representational shifts. Throughout these cycles, certain identities have remained privileged, embodied by thin, white and heteronormatively attractive models. While the 1990s began to challenge this dominance, with a broader range of aesthetics emerging, the dominant body remains consistent and prevalent today. The chapter has presented an overview of the history of the fashion model and its function in the fashion industry as representing a certain feminine aesthetic. The chapter contends that the representation of gender in fashion is a social barometer of questions of gender and identity, whether through the enhanced visibility of diversity or the reinforcement of stereotypical ideals. Ultimately, the twenty-first century, with its focus on self- branding and celebrity, has propelled the professionalisation of gender.
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This point leads to the following chapter, which specifically examines the emergence of the genderqueer fashion model and the unique social and political structures defining their visibility as cultural intermediaries.
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Chapter 4: The Contemporary and Genderqueer Fashion Model
This chapter disentangles complexities of the contemporary fashion model by interrogating the emergence of the genderqueer fashion model as a cultural intermediary. It begins with an overview of the significant developments in the visibility of genderqueer models over the period
2010–2016, and frames fashion models as cultural intermediaries that are a part of broader celebrity culture. As cultural intermediaries, genderqueer fashion models engage and participate in the evolving construction of their own images. As such, they are subject to the audience gaze, and thus the question of who is looking is pertinent to this study. Accordingly, this chapter investigates the conditions under which contemporary genderqueer fashion models achieve visibility, exploring questions of race and whiteness, the privileged gaze and the limitations of post-gender performances within the homogenising and exclusionary nature of the Western fashion system. Building on the historical context explored in Chapter 2, this chapter aims to locate the genderqueer fashion model in its contemporary function as a product of the intersection of fashion, gender and media systems. The chapter concludes by proposing a set of hypotheses that are then tested through the four case studies.
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The Genderqueer Fashion Model Emerges
Since the turn of the millennium, notions of gender nonconformity and diverse gender identities have become more prominent in the fashion-modelling industry. Andreja Pejić’s career started in 2010, marking the beginning of a significant shift in the industry. At around the same time, Brazilian model Lea T, French model Ines-Loan Rau and Dutch model Valentijn de Hingh were all openly transgender models working in fashion. Similarly, US model Casey Legler became the first woman signed to a menswear agency in 2012. Since then, many new genderqueer, transgender, nonbinary and GNC models have emerged in the industry.
Contemporary genderqueer models include Rain Dove, who works across menswear and womenswear; transgender model Theodora ‘Teddy’
Quinlivian, who came out as transgender in 2017, having modelled since
2015; Laith Ashley De La Cruz, a transgender menswear and fitness model; and Avie Acosta, a transgender woman and GNC model. These are just several notable identities among an ever-growing cohort of models who challenge heteronormative and binary gender. Mauriès (2017, 154) argues that the emergence of genderqueer fashion models “has marked a genuine turning point in the history of contemporary fashion and has had a symbolic significance far beyond this particular domain”.
The symbolic significance of genderqueer fashion models is produced via what Craik (1994) and Mears (2011) describe as commercialised gendered performance. The historical overview in
Chapter 3 reveals that as fashion models’ aesthetics and representations
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of gender shifted throughout the twentieth century, so too did their visibility and cultural impact. By the end of the twentieth century, fashion models clearly held aspirational and symbolic power as icons of beauty. Their transformation from low-status members of what was considered an indecent profession in the early twentieth century to icons of popular culture by the late twentieth century indicates their rise to prominence within broader visual culture, along with the fortification of celebrity culture as a dominant cultural force in the late twentieth century. In consumer culture, this celebrity status positioned models as cultural intermediaries, a place once reserved for cinema stars. As celebrities, they came to represent an embodied measure of value bestowed on the products, ideas and goods with which they are associated.
Celebrity Culture
The late twentieth century and early twenty-first century saw fashion models become increasingly visible in popular culture beyond fashion imagery. Following the example of the original supermodels, some female models have emerged as entrepreneurial figures capable of building their own consumer empires based on their brand image. Their commercial success is directly linked to their level of celebrity, which subsequently endorses their lives as a source of constant interest in the public domain. Models who achieve celebrity beyond the confines of fashion also potentially garner a cultural status and potential influence well beyond their role as beauty and style icons. As Marshall (2006, 5)
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explains, in contemporary society, “celebrity becomes the lens through which we understand a variety of issues, disciplines, and concerns”. For
Marshall, “nature, science, and wildlife are translated through the gonzo celebrity Steve Irwin, the chastising David Suzuki, or the exuberant David
Attenborough” (5). Following this example, fashion models might be said to translate understandings about beauty and what it means to be fashionable. The celebrities who are lifted up and valourised by society provide a specific window into contemporary culture: “From an industrial as much as a cultural vantage point, celebrities are integral for understanding the contemporary moment” (Marshall 2006, 6). More broadly, in terms of celebrity in consumer culture, Marshall explains that
“celebrities articulate identity and individuality” (4). Individualism is a key component of contemporary consumer culture, as it drives the desire for goods that promise self-betterment and, ultimately, happiness. Celebrities act as examples of identities that form part of our social learning in terms of modelling our own identity. Celebrities connect the individual to the mass, since they produce “a layer of discourse that allows us to explore the articulation of identity, individuality, value, and norms within particular cultures, as well as the movement of these articulations between cultures” (Marshall 2006, 6).
Wissinger (2013) argues that the life of the contemporary model, who retains (if not surpasses) the same capacity for celebrity as the models of the 1980s, is now broadcast around the clock because of new digital technologies. Promoting these model lifestyles not only sells
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products and the models themselves, but also “draws publics towards being regulated by fashion, engaging with its rhythms, aligning with its needs” (Wissinger 2013, 141). Wissinger positions the fashion model as an aspirational and an all-encompassing lifestyle brand. Entwistle and
Slater (2012, 28) argue that the model is best interpreted as a brand, where “every social site (is seen) as potentially contributing to the construction of this object”. The contemporary model’s brand is a complex combination of photographic and runway work, professional and social associations, and leisure activities. The role of the contemporary model goes far beyond that of a face in a magazine; they represent a set of ideals, lifestyle choices and aesthetics to which consumers aspire, and their presence is felt far past the reach of the fashion industry. In this sense, the fashion model’s investment in their work and private life transforms them into an embodied brand centred on their identity. As such, models become producers of cultural practices on which we model our own identities as part of the aspirational and educational functions of celebrity culture.
Central to the appeal and influence of the fashion model, and closely linked to formation of celebrity, is the concept of glamour.
Buckley and Gundle (2000) explain that according to its original meaning, the term ‘glamour’ refers to an alluring and intangible quality of attractiveness that is magical or bewitching, often sexual in nature. First appearing in nineteenth-century literary works by Walter Scott depicting romanticised narratives of medieval life, full of high-contrast actions and
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dramatic phrases, ‘glamour’, or the notion of creating desire, has been linked to the emergence of modern consumerism (Buckley and Gundle
2000, 333). As Buckley and Gundle (2000, 33) explain, in the late nineteenth century, “products became associated with the dreams people were acquiring of themselves as beautiful, attractive, successful, wealthy and healthy”. Further:
Products were enjoyed not purely for their practical benefits but at an imaginative level through representations, with creative and entertaining experiences informing the act of purchase and bringing a variety of added values (Buckley and Gundle 2000, 333).
Creating desire by depicting an ideal image is very much a cornerstone of the fashion industry, specifically the fashion model. While it is easy to understand how celebrity and glamour as represented by feminine aesthetics act in a feminised industry, and how they position the fashion model as a mediator between fashionable aesthetics, social gender roles and consumer desire, this role is less obvious when it comes to genderqueer fashion models. The next section teases out the role of the fashion model as a cultural intermediary to understand how it can also be read in genderqueer fashion models.
Fashion Models as Cultural Intermediaries
The concept of cultural intermediaries emerged from the work of
French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu in the late twentieth century. He proposed a theory of the interconnectedness of class systems in the emerging cultural economy, and his work Distinction (1984) uses survey
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data collected in 1960s France, where an increased access to education changed the social landscape such that education became a lesser guarantee of a certain class status. To understand this new social landscape and the changed relationship between economic capital and class, Bourdieu proposes the concepts of cultural, social and symbolic capital. This redefinition of class was put forward within the emerging cultural economy—the system via which cultural goods are produced, distributed and consumed (Anheier and Isar 2007, 3). Cultural goods are defined as commodities with “symbolic” value (Bourdieu 1971), or what
Scott (2008, 307) defines as “forms of economic activity producing outputs with significant aesthetic or semiotic content”. In the cultural economy, the aesthetic and symbolic value of goods and services and their capacity to build the consumer’s cultural capital are a new measure of value and worth that go beyond monetary and functional value.
Cultural intermediaries were originally identified by Bourdieu as programmers of screen content and critics of print media —in brief, the cultural workers situated between producers of content (authors) and consumers (Bourdieu 1984, 325). However, contemporary scholarship has extended this definition to include a wider range of occupations as they exist within the contemporary cultural landscape, and has also worked to critique and add more specificity to the definition (Nixon and du Gay 2002; Hesmondhalgh 2006) of Bourdieu’s “intentionally or unintentionally ambiguous” (Kobayashi, Jackson and Sam 2018, 131) conceptualisation which leaves significant room for interpretation.
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Kobayashi, Jackson and Sam (2018) explain that recent scholarship identifies the concept of “taste-making” as Bourdieu’s most significant and enduring contribution to current understandings of cultural intermediaries, along with the concepts of “the new petite bourgeoisie,”
“the field of of cultural production” and “cultural capital” (130). As the authors explain:
Although the concept [of the cultural intermediary] was initially used by Bourdieu to refer to a specific occupational group and widely applied by various scholars to range of commercial production, the abstract and diverse use of the term was questioned by some and gradually relinquished by those who once popularized it in media and cultural studies” (Kobayashi, Jackson and Sam 2018, 129).
A significant critique made by Featherstone (1991) would later redefine the notion of cultural intermediaries by moving the discussion away from the cultural intermediary’s practice as mediation across taste and class
(and between ‘high’ and ‘low’ culture), towards a practice of mediation between the areas of production and consumption. Contemporary examples of cultural intermediaries that exemplify this practice between production and consumption are music producers (Negus 2002), advertising agents (Nixon and du Gay 2002), celebrity chefs (Piper 2015), personal fitness trainers (Smith Maguire 2008), retailers in the “nerd- culture scene” (Woo 2012), fashion designers (Skov 2002) and fashion buyers (Entwistle 2006). These articulations of cultural mediation interrogate Bourdieu’s (1984) claim that cultural intermediaries have a
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simplistic linear function as “transmission belt” (365) of emergent cultural values to consumers. Instead, they disentangle how these occupations are “implicated in the mutual constitution of production and consumption, economy and culture” (Smith Maguire 2008, 216). This more recent approach to cultural mediation considers “economy and culture as dynamic and mutually iterative, with the interface between them being situational and accomplished through specific, materials practices” (Smith Maguire 2008, 216). Cultural Intermediaries are more recently theorised as being unfixed and mobile, with their work an active
“negotiation between production and consumption, and between economic and cultural agendas, knowledges and constraints” (Smith
Maguire 2008, 216).
These cultural intermediaries are defined by “their explicit claims to professional expertise in taste and value within specific cultural fields” (Smith Maguire and Matthews 2012, 552). Cultural intermediaries
“frame goods and practices so that they appear to the consumer to ‘go together’ with his or her taste” (Smith Maguire and Matthews 2014, 20).
They do this by having an expert status in their field, which gives their mediation legitimacy. As Smith Maguire and Matthews (2014, 21) explain, “they are not simply taste makers; they are professional tastemakers” and “authorities of legitimation” (Bourdieu 1990, 96).
Cultural intermediaries contribute to the perception of a given product’s value, and therefore what cultural value the consumer acquires by purchasing it. In consumer culture, consumers define themselves
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through their own consumption (Lury 1996) of goods that carry symbolic and aspirational value. This value is thus transferred to the consumer.
The symbolic and aspirational values of goods vary—they may promise a happier life, guarantee a level of status or signpost the owner as
‘fashionable’—but these values are inscribed onto goods in part by the work of cultural intermediaries. By promoting goods in a particular way, cultural intermediaries “forge a sense of identification” (Negus 2002,
504) between goods and consumer. Thus, cultural intermediaries play a key role in the connection between consumption and identity formation, acting as a value mediator in the process.
Wissinger (2009, 273) positions fashion models as cultural intermediaries who “frame consumer experiences and encounters with commodities in the selection, styling and dissemination of images populated by models”. Entwistle and Slater (2014) further qualify the fashion model as a very specific and extreme example of a cultural intermediary that sits between economic and cultural production, whose work is read by consumers and scholars almost entirely within a complex system of signification, inextricably connected to cultural systems:
Indeed, the construction, coding and valorising of particular kinds of bodies have generally been researched in terms of processes of representation governed by codes, ideologies and structures of power and value such as ‘patriarchy’. Conversely, the model images are then to be read, decoded and interpreted as symptomatic instances of the broader cultural formations which generate and explain them. Finally, and by the same token, broad cultural codes are also taken to explain the effects
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or impacts of model images: model images actively constitute forms of subjectivity in the very process of ‘reading’ a text and internalising the values instantiated in them. In brief the entire circuit of model images from fashion system to feminine consumer appears to be traceable without leaving the terrain of signification (Entwistle and Slater 2014, 167).
In short, the fashion model’s function as cultural intermediary is much more complex than simply taste-maker: the fashion model embodies and is a product of cultural values, is read and consumed for the values they promote, and hence perpetuate the very system of cultural values from which they originate. Also, in their study on the fashion industry, Molloy and Larner maintain that “the boundary between culture making, cultural mediation and cultural consumption is increasingly blurred and difficult to pin down” (2010, 362).
Wissinger (2009) explains that models frame consumption by literally lending their images to brands with the intent of selling products (274). Beyond their professional outputs, contemporary fashion models frame consumption in the way they engage in and make visible their ‘model lifestyles’. Increasingly, fashion models must brand their identity on social platforms to remain relevant in the industry. The line between models’ professional and personal images is increasingly blurred as their “productive labour is bound up with the ways in which they consume, which in turn produces them as a commodity within the modelling labour market” (Wissinger 2009, 281). This practice not only gives credibility through the conscious display of their personal
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expertise, but their “compulsory self-modification”, which takes shape as “aesthetic, entrepreneurial and immaterial labour”, promotes the lifestyle of being “in-fashion” as “a good in and of itself” (Wissinger
2009, 274‒275). In short, models “mediate our experiences of commodities, and commodify the experience of being ‘in fashion’“
(Wissinger 2009, 275).
Entwistle (2006) describes the system of fashion as an aesthetic marketplace built on aesthetic products, the production of symbolic value and aesthetic labour. This is a system where a look or style can be a commodity. However, unlike many other markets, Entwistle explains that “fashion markets are demonstrably concerned with the body and the orientations are specifically towards bodily aesthetics” (3). She continues:
Indeed, fashion throws into sharp relief the importance of bodily display and performance by actors inside the market, who must embody the very style or aesthetic they seek to commodify. That is to say, fashion markets are enacted through embodied style, with fashion knowledge performed on the bodies of those actors inside the market (Entwistle 2006, 3).
Entwistle consistently reiterates the centrality of the body in all fashion, contending that fashion modelling is “implicated in this dissemination of bodily aesthetics” (16). She argues that models are:
both conscious embodied mediators of style, fashioning themselves through various forms of ‘aesthetic labour’ (Entwistle and Wissinger 2006) to secure work in this competitive industry; they are also unwitting complicit
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components in networks of image production that mediate style, fashion and body aesthetics (Entwistle 2006, 17, original emphasis).
However, fashion models mediate many things at once, not just a specific bodily aesthetic. They also mediate the identity of the brands to which they are connected, as well as broader ideas of fashionable taste in clothing (Entwistle 2006, 17). Models are “significant nodes in the dissemination of aesthetics” (Entwistle 2006, 17) who mediate both unconsciously in systems beyond their control, and consciously as self- styled agents. That is, “the work of mediation is a complex one, not limited to conscious human agents” (Entwistle 2006, 17). This widening of models’ role as cultural intermediators indicates that they also mediate intangible values and identities—thus, this project argues that fashion models simultaneously mediate the value of gendered identities, which can be seen, as discussed in the previous chapter, as the professionalisation of gender.
In fact, the question of exactly how models exercise agency is of significance to this project—particularly in relation to the politics of gender identity. On the one hand, it may be contentious to argue for autonomy of the fashion model, as they are styled by clients and other creative actors in the production of their image (Wissinger 2009, 278).
For many lower ranking models, their success and visibility largely depend on management, while their personal agency is more diffused
(Wissinger 2009, 280). However, Wissinger (2009, 278) also argues that
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“models can become self-styled agents of their own symbolic meaning”, depending on their modelling notoriety and corresponding level of autonomy in their professional work. Wissinger argues that a model’s level of autonomy is determined by a combination of how valued their look` is, the kind of work in which they appear and where it is seen, the fashion shows in which they participate and the extent to which their model lifestyle is made visible in the media and via their own social media platforms (279). The acquisition of expertise and cultural capital is particularly relevant for fashion models, as many begin their careers based on genetically determined aesthetics, not expertise. Their gateway to becoming a cultural intermediary is their appearance, but the skill of framing goods and themselves as a commodity is developed over time.
Similarly, Skov (2014, 113) interrogates Bourdieu’s notion that cultural intermediaries have an element of pedagogical agenda in their mediation practices, arguing instead that many actors in the fashion industry perform their roles without a personal investment; any residual mediation of cultural content is secondary.
Whilst this project maintains that the four genderqueer fashion models discussed as case studies have considerable agency within their work, other authors present more problematic views. On the process of mediation, Hennion and Grenier (2000, 346) explain “something effectively ‘happens’ in this process which transforms the way things were before”, whereas Sommerlund’s (2008) discussion of human and non-human agents in the process of mediation somewhat circumvents
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the question of fashion models’ agency. Sommerlund argues that
“mediation is not necessarily performed by human actors... Mediation can be performed by discourse, technology, or people”. The author proposes that within a fashion context, mediations are made through many non-human agents or aesthetic objects, including fashion fairs, show-rooms and look-books (Sommerlund 2008, 169). Specifically,
Sommerlund interrogates the production of imagery for fashion look- books, and emphasises “the important role played by the model as mediator” (175). Within the combination of the network of creatives that produce a fashion image, the fashion model actively “changes the clothes” (176) and redefines their symbolic meaning. This implies that regardless of the level of agency of a fashion model, they still act as mediator capable of effecting the mediation made by a fashion image.
Sommerlund suggests, even if models are positioned as objects, “both subjects and objects can be active” (176) in the process of mediation.
Thus, “the term of ‘mediator’ is especially apt for studying models” and
“the ‘mediator’ shortcuts the question of whether fashion models are active subjects or whether they are ‘merely’ objects” (Sommerlund 2008,
176). That is to say, fashion models have an immutable effect on the mediation that happens as a result of the imagery they appear in. In the case of the four genderqueer fashion models analysed in this study, their presence in an image as known gender diverse identities, and sometimes visibly gender non-conforming aesthetics, effects the mediation made by
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an image, regardless if they specifically dictate the terms of the image production and dissemination.
Wissinger (2009, 277) argues that fashion models “provide a labor force for constructing the iconography of desire”. This ‘labor face’ consists of models performing aesthetic labour, where successful models take on “the responsibility of managing their bodies, becoming
‘enterprising’ with respect to all aspects of their embodied self”
(Entwistle and Wissinger 2006, 791). Entwistle and Wissinger (2006, 277) argue that aesthetic labour is not just a workplace practice, but, for female fashion models, a round-the-clock practice of “bodily maintenance”. A fashion model’s “labour of aesthetics involves longer- term commitments to ‘body-projects’” (Entwistle and Wissinger 2006,
777). Inherent in this labour are gendered practices—female models particularly are valourised for their desirable bodily aesthetic and lifestyle choices. This project proposes that genderqueer fashion models mediate new ideas of gender that in turn challenge prevailing understandings. However, this mediation occurs within existing structures of power that define its form and impact. The following section interrogates these conditions within which the mediation of fashion models takes place.
The Conditions of Genderqueer Fashion Models’ Visibility
The previous chapter made evident that the fashion model has historically mediated ideas about gender, oscillating between normative
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and non-normative over time; instead, contemporary fashion models mediate multiple ideas of gender at once. However, Mears (2010) argues that even within the multiplicity of representations, female models are still limited to “market specific version(s) of femininity” (41) that are constructed along “race and class lines” (21). Despite a variety of looks among contemporary female fashion models (including different standards for editorial and commercial models), Mears makes the intersectional argument that all variations still fit within “the narrow definition of femininity within white terms” (22). Contemporary fashion models are generally “heteronormatively attractive” (Mears 2010, 23) and fit into Eurocentric normative standards of beauty, thus privileging very narrow definitions of beauty and taste. Consequently, the following section seeks to unpack the systems that define the conditions of genderqueer models’ visibility—conditions that paradoxically dilute and problematise their capacity for social critique, beginning with whiteness as a cultural system.
Cultural whiteness As Mears (2011) contends, the problem of racial homogenisation in fashion modelling has persisted throughout the twentieth century. While headway has been made in recent years, with the rate of models of colour working in a runway context increasing from 17% in 2015 to
32.5% in 2018 (Tai 2018), the overarching culture of whiteness upon which the fashion-modelling industry is founded ensures that
Eurocentric standards of beauty remain dominant. Since the 1970s, there
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have been exemplar cases of noncaucasian models being highly successful and revered by the industry, such as Iman and Naomi
Campbell. The narratives of these models are often called upon to defend against claims of white supremacy in the fashion industry, but their role as exemplars makes painfully clear that the fashion-modelling industry, and indeed the Western fashion system, is built upon a cultural system of whiteness.
In his text White, Dyer ([1997] 2017) explains how visual representation systems such as cinema can be seen as “cultural mechanisms by which white hegemony is formed and reproduced, mechanisms under which whites have come to represent what is ordinary, neutral, even universal” (Cervulle quoted in Dyer [1997] 2017, xv‒xvi). These are cultural sites “where the perception of reality is reconfigured” (Cervulle quoted in Dyer [1997] 2017, xiii‒xiv). This theory can be extended to fashion imagery and therefore fashion models, as the production of fashion imagery borrows stylistically and structurally from cinema and, like cinema, informs the broader field of visual culture.
Whiteness as a cultural system ensures that in visual culture,
‘whiteness’ is read as ‘blankness’. Cervulle (quoted in Dyer [1997] 2017, xviii) explains that in representations of whiteness, white subjects hold a
“‘neutral’ position in race relations”. White subjects constitute:
the norm from which deviations can be assessed; hence the polarisation of the visible between on the one hand, a group whose members embody universality, and, on the other hand, a
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multitude of other groups that are relegated to the particular (Cervulle quoted in Dyer [1997] 2017, xviii).
In this way, Dyer ([1997] 2017) explains, white subjects are read not as racialised, but as just ‘humans’. This is particularly pertinent in the case of fashion models, who are often theorised outside whiteness theory as
‘blank canvases’ for clothing or ‘coathangers’, and as having a
“fashionably blank expression” (Gilbert-Rolfe 1997, 166) that represent not a lack of expression, but a “possibility of expression” (Gilbert-Rolfe
1997, 167). These readings are almost exclusively made of white models.
The critique of whiteness as a cultural system allows “for new ways of looking at the distribution of the visible and the invisible” (Cervulle quoted in Dyer [1997] 2017, xvii), enabling this project to keep the fashion-modelling industry’s “implicitly racialised values” (Cervulle quoted in Dyer [1997] 2017, xv) at the forefront of its analysis.
Exemplifying Dyer’s arguments from an industry perspective,
Wissinger (2013) argues that the homogenisation of the fashion model’s aesthetics, within which thinness and whiteness are privileged, is a deliberate departure from reality designed to elevate the status of garments in fashion branding. Fashion models’ beauty is what Entwistle
(2004, 60) calls “internally valorised”. She argues that “fashion models are sometimes quite unattractive by conventional standards of beauty found outside of fashion modelling” (Entwistle 2004, 60). This observation dovetails with the previously discussed changes in model aesthetics that occurred during the 1990s, when the notion of the
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conventionally beautiful model lost its importance. Wissinger links the continued homogenisation of models in terms of thinness and whiteness to new technologies, or what she terms “blink technologies” (133), in a self-perpetuting cycle of elitist image production. Similarly, Mears (2011,
206‒207) argues that fashion houses “choose models principally because they do not have anything in common with the average shopper” and that therefore “everyday bodies and their racial diversity have no place” in the context of high fashion. Therefore, Mears links the intense homogenisation of race in models to the competition for status among designers, while Wissinger suggests that this is also linked to the pushing effect of new media for the whitest, thinnest extremes of fashion imagery.
In contemporary media culture, characterised by “shortened attention spans” (Wissinger 2013, 139) and a rapid image cycle, increasingly slim, white models are used “in order to be read as fashionable in a split second” (Wissinger 2013, 139). This suggests that the homogenisation of body type and race in fashion modelling is part of an insular media cycle that circulates aesthetic ideals bearing a predetermined fashionable status. This predetermined status of fashionability is intrinsically linked to the broader conditions of a
Western patriarchal capitalist context, where white, heteronormative attractiveness is seen as paramount to profit—or, following Dyer, via the culture of whiteness that dominates Western media. Cultural whiteness prevails across both the dominant aesthetics of the Western fashion
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system and, apparently, those who consume it, further compounding this insular system of homogenisation. The implication of whiteness as a cultural system in the phenomenon of genderqueer fashion models is that despite their capacity to trouble social categories of gender, genderqueer models still potentially uphold the rigid Eurocentric beauty ideals within visual culture.
The privileged liberal gaze The nature of those who view images of genderqueer fashion models further interrogates the radicalism of their post-gender performances. The question at stake has to do with understanding the kind of audience for these images that represent post-gender performances. This project claims that genderqueer fashion models contribute to disseminating contemporary queer understandings of gender via their visibility in arenas of media, which ultimately teach
“technologies of gender” (De Lauretis 1987, x). These models operate largely within a specific overlapping cultural context: fashion media and popular culture. The readership of these models’ work is largely a
‘fashion’ audience: their work appears predominantly in the arena of avant-garde and high-end fashion media, including fashion magazines, fashion advertisements and runway shows. Many of the brands these models represent are avant-garde design houses or have an existing social agenda central to their brand image, such as Jean Paul Gaultier’s longstanding association with the queer community. These fashion arenas generally have an informed and progressive audience reading
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images and media through a liberal gaze, and with significant cultural capital. That is, the traditional Western fashion audience is often presumed to be white women of means, with the privilege to access commercial ‘fashion’. Further, an avant-garde audience is presumed to possess liberal and socially progressive views. While traditionally a predominantly print-based readership, fashion audiences today are spread across print readers, live viewership and, most significantly, internet spectatorship.
Reception studies frame the spectatorship of fashion imagery as largely white women who consume, over-identify with and desire the model represented (Fuss 1992). Consequently, the visual consumption of fashion imagery is characterised by some as both “vampiric” in nature
(Fuss 1992, 729) and a tool for informing a homosexual gaze and response in presumably heterosexual women viewers (Lewis and Rolley
1996). Other reception studies describe the variation in readers’ interpretation of images as entirely dependent on their age, race and social class, particularly in regards to their reading of gender (Crane
1999). Crane (1999, 544) argues that fashion images “are likely to be subject to different interpretation because they present diverse and crosscutting identities that reflect the complexities of defining identities and nonidentities in contemporary culture”. Crane’s observation of the social aspect of looking can be linked to Rose’s psychoanalytical theory of looking as a destabilising process in terms of gender. Rose (1986, 227) writes, “Each time the stress falls on a problem of seeing. The sexuality
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lies less in the content of what is seen than in the subjectivity of the viewer”. Therefore, the potential reading and impact of a fashion image is largely affected by personal subjectivity, but when the predominant audience is a white, privileged one, and the cultural whiteness of the fashion industry represents homogenised Eurocentric beauty standards, questions must be raised over who these fashion images are made for, and what the implications are of the viewers’ gaze.
For audiences encountering images of genderqueer fashion models, whether a presumed audience of liberal white women or a more diverse one—especially one facilitated by digital technologies, fashion and social media—the highly contested question of media images’ impact on audiences remains pertinent. As previously noted, the effect of model images on their viewers has long been the source of moral criticism in scholarly debate (Kilbourne 1993; Bordo 1993; Maynard 1999). However, to say that media effect is consistent across gender, race, age and religion, as established in reception studies, is debatable:
There are also the issues of internalization and effects of media representations. Beginning with the former, not everyone will internalize the messages of popular culture in the same ways. For example, two college-age women may avidly read women’s fashion magazines and consume other hyper-feminine media content and their psyches won’t necessarily be impacted in the same way. One woman may develop a poor body image, low self- esteem, and may engage in any number of behaviors as a result, from cosmetic surgery to developing an eating disorder or disordered eating. The other woman may be less deeply impacted; however, there is no telling the extent to which that
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media still shapes her beauty or relationships ideals. Although we don’t all internalize gender constructions the same way, we all live in a society in which there are widespread effects of media representations (Leavy and Trier-Bieniek 2014, 18).
The authors here refer to some common interpretations of the effects of fashion model images in regards to body image; equally, this can be interpreted as a comment on how fashion models teach “techniques of femininity” (Craik 1994, 44). While the degree to which media images and fashion model images affect the formation of identity and gender ideals in the individual varies, other reception studies agree that generally, fashion imagery has the capacity to contribute to incremental social change in the broader system of media culture. Moreover, while
Leavy and Trier-Bieniek (2014) argue that the effects of media are not consistent or predictable, they recognise that we all experience effects from media in some form. This project intends to unpack to possible ways in which images of genderqueer fashion models may be read and, therefore, the potential media effect they may offer.
Echoing the work of De Lauretis (1987) and Craik (1994), Leavy and
Trier-Bieniek (2014, 13) argue that “media culture is one of the major agents of socialization through which we learn the norms and values of our society” and that “socially constructed ideas about gender often originate in, and are reinforced by, dominant narratives in the popular culture”. These dominant narratives proliferate in culture, take on the
“appearance of normality” (Leavy and Trier-Bieniek 2014, 13) and work to frame our social values and beliefs. Fashion images of genderqueer
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models may be predominantly read by a ‘fashion’ audience presumed to be white, liberal women. For this audience, gender performances may or may not challenge the status quo—but inevitably, their absorption into broader media systems renders them accessible to a diversified audience whose readings may be radically different.
The privileged liberal gaze and the impact of fashion imagery are central points of contention in this study. Questions remain about who is genderqueer models’ audience and what their real capacity for social engagement and intersectional gender trouble might be. These contentions are closely linked to the cultural system of whiteness that underpins the fashion-modelling industry. A white audience might read a white GNC person as palatable because of their whiteness, but is the palatable presentation of gender nonconformity challenging if it is heavily dictated along racial lines? Throughout the case studies, the potential audience of the models’ works is discussed to unravel the potential for transgressing the cultural gender norms each model represents. Similarly, the notion of cultural whiteness is applied throughout the case studies to critique the conditions of genderqueer models’ visibility.
Can there really be ‘post-gender’ performances? As Butler ([1990] 1999) proposes, strategies of “gender trouble” have the capacity to undermine systems of heteronormative intelligibility. However, gendered performances within fashion inevitably rely on the codes of conventional gender to produce meaning. Some
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kinds of gendered performances are more troubling than others, despite the unconventional identities behind them. To conclude this investigation of the genderqueer fashion model, this section now briefly reflects on the concept of ‘post-gender’ performances.
One of the most pertinent debates in contemporary discourse is on transgender identities, particularly trans individuals who identify within the gender binary. Certain branches of contemporary feminism take issue with transgender binary-conforming identities, such as some factions of radical feminism and essentialist feminism, which are often referred to as trans-exclusionary radical feminism (TERF). In an equal and opposite vein, some areas of feminism specifically rally to break down these arguments. In the former, gender feminists maintain efforts to gain increased women’s rights and place the embodied experience of being socialised as a woman as central to their political efforts. In the latter, queer activists and theorists and transfeminists aim to erode the gender binary altogether, challenging cisprivilege and keeping intersectionality central to their cause. Questions of embodiment remain central to these current debates in gender-based identity politics as the question of gender remains a red herring.
Transgender rights have become a significant focus in contemporary debates as transgender individuals increasingly enter roles of visibility and power. Feminists who reject the notion of self-determined gender as a means of restricting transgender individuals’ access to gender-specific
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spaces are often called trans-exclusionary radical feminists (TERFs).
Criticisms of TERFs are that they uphold essentialist arguments from the second wave of feminism, and are in fact reinforcing the gender binary and essentialism by excluding diverse gender identities. While contemporary queer biology has offered a more nuanced explanation of the gendering process as a biopsychosocial one, questions remain about the content of cultural knowledge about gender itself. The inescapable cultural knowing of gender complicates the arguments on both sides of this debate, and the debate about the right to a chosen identity sits at the forefront of gender discourse. The current spectrum of gender identities is complex, fragmented and ever-evolving, yet certain factions of gender feminists will not move beyond ‘man’ and ‘woman’ and their biological underpinnings.
In the analysis of genderqueer fashion models, the question of binary-conforming trans identities is central, as many prominent genderqueer fashion models are trans women. They work in the traditional role of womenswear models, and largely perform and are received as cisgendered models. This poses the question: are their aesthetics, which are normatively feminine and in many ways contributing to hegemonic Eurocentric ideals of femininity, performing gender trouble? This project posits that their work is transgressive, and that this transgression occurs in both their embodied practice and their work as activists.
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This project contends that genderqueer fashion models, many of whom identify as transgender or fit broader definitions of the term, represent a complex critical opportunity to reflect on how societal ideals of beauty are inextricable to normative gender standards. Elliot (2010) argues that transgender identities reveal the tensions between heteronormative gender, sex and embodiment, and are thus fundamental in the analysis of the cultural anxieties at stake in their subversion. Quoting transgender studies theorist Sandy Stone, Elliot argues that the transgender body is a critically engaging site for
“exploring the chaos of our collective experiences of gender that Stone suggests can never be ordered, solved or settled” (4). Genderqueer fashion models are an embodied challenge to the dominance of the heterosexual matrix, and represent a need for deeper critical reflection on the “relationship of bodies and identities” (Elliot 2010, 4) that fuel our own personal and societal understandings of gender.
To analyse the complex critical opportunity genderqueer fashion models present through post-gender performances, two specific strands of theory that offer frameworks for analysis are drawn upon: embodiment and narrativity. These concepts are particularly important to this research project, as the work of fashion models is an embodied performance of aesthetic labour. Similarly, narrativity underpins the project hypothesis: that genderqueer fashion models mediate contemporary ideas of gender through their commercial embodiment of their gender identity, as they draw on their personal, subjective
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narrative to describe, frame and ultimately commodify their identity within broader visual culture.
Theoretical discussions of embodiment champion the corporeal, bodily experience as key to the formation of subjectivity. For Grosz
(1994), the embodied experienced is an interplay between mind, body and subjectivity, connecting a person’s subjectivity to their corporeality.
Her work argues against models of subjectivity that disregard materiality and embodiment, as this allows an emphasis on reason and consciousness (which have arguably been theorised in ‘sex-blind’ discourses), instead promoting a subjectivity centred on corporeality.
Similarly, Gatens (1995, vii) attempts to identify the “unacknowledged philosophical underpinnings of representations of sexual difference”.
She posits that all knowledge is filtered through language, specifically the language of the medical field, which does not escape the constructive nature of discourse. Gatens emphasises the importance of how the body exists in discourse, and how cultural understandings of the categories of ‘man’ and ‘woman’ are formed through the dominant social ways they are ‘imagined’ via symbolic representations. Through embodied representation of non-normative genders in their professional practice, genderqueer fashion models are performing layered embodied practices that are inextricable from their commercial function.
In a similar vein, narrativity is a theoretical strategy for addressing the disconnect between the theorised or imaginary subject with the
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embodied, lived experience of identity. McAdams (1993, 11) proposes that identity is “the idea that each of us comes to know who he or she is by creating a heroic story of the self”. This concept offers a framework for discussing gender identity that accounts for its nuances and variances, as well as the overlapping social structures that alter the individual experience and formation of identity. The concept of narrativity is particularly useful in discussions of new and emerging gender identities. This clearly speaks to the work of genderqueer fashion models, as they mediate new ideas about gender via their professional work, which is centred on their unique gendered experience. It also provides a framework for defending this project against criticisms that transgender models are further reinforcing the gender binary.
To conclude this discussion of the limitations of post-gender performances, the work of contemporary philosopher Rosi Braidotti
(2011, 2013), which describes advanced capitalism, informs a counterpoint to documenting the genderqueer model phenomenon here.
This project establishes that these models embody key ongoing conflicts and tensions in contemporary gender discourse, as their queer identities oscillate between celebration for the ways in which they challenge persistent associations between cisnormative femininity and beauty and critique for the ways in which they reinforce heteronormative gender ideals. While genderqueer fashion models can be seen as increasing the visibility of diverse gender identities in the fashion industry, they have also conversely been written off entirely as a short-term trend and
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marketing gimmick, following the disposable nature of fashion culture.
Braidotti’s work in Nomadic theory (2011) is useful for articulating the broader structures of advanced capitalism within which genderqueer fashion models have emerged. Her work explains how an effect and strategy between digital technology and advanced capitalism led to the
“commodification of differences” (Braidotti 2011, 27). Advanced capitalism describes the state of a society that has thoroughly integrated and developed under a capitalist model for a prolonged period. German sociologist Jürgen Habermas (2015) adds that the defining features of advanced capitalism are concentrated industrial activity within a small number of large firms, reliance on the government for economic stability, an ostensibly democratic government that makes decisions independently of its citizens and the use of incremental pay increases to pacify the working class.
Braidotti (2011, 15) argues that “advanced capitalism is a difference engine in that it promotes the marketing of pluralistic differences and the commodification of the existence, the culture, the discourses of
‘others’ for the purpose of consumerism” (2011, 25). She further contends:
Late postindustrial societies have proved far more flexible and adaptable toward the proliferation of differences than the classical left expected. These ‘differences’ have been turned, however, into and constructed as marketable, consumable, and often disposable ‘others’ (Braidotti 2011, 25).
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Braidotti goes on to explain that this process disrupts the traditional power relationship others have with the mainstream, where historically, those who are made other via systems of oppression are also capable of challenging the status quo and uprising. In advanced capitalism,
Braidotti argues, the “multiplying and distributing differences for the sake of profit” (27) effectively strips the power held by others, and
“advanced capitalism looks like a system that promotes feminism without women … sexuality without gender … multiculturalism without ending racism” (27). By extension, it is possible to say that advanced capitalism promotes queerness without empowering queer identities.
Braidotti asserts that “the sporadic concurrence of these phenomena is the distinctive trait of our age” (27). That is, the commodification of difference and its capacity to actually disempower those made visible by it is a symptom of advanced capitalism’s flexibility. This acts as a counterpoint to claims this project makes about genderqueer fashion models contributing to shifting attitudes around gender, as the broader context of advanced capitalism, Braidotti may posit, can at least partly explain their emergence.
Further, Braidotti’s (2013) work on ‘posthumanism’ contextualises this project more broadly, as it offers a theory of how advancements in technology and society have destabilised Enlightenment-age thinking, which was responsible for centring the category of man. As an increasing technologically dependent society detaches from the human body as a central reference point of reality, new digital virtualities work to
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destabilise all structures that define “the structural others of the modern humanistic subject” (Braidotti 2013, 37)—that is, all that is not man. As Braidotti explains, “Advanced capitalism is a post-gender system capable of accommodating a high degree of androgyny and a significant blurring of the categorical divide between the sexes” (98).
Posthumanism offers “alternative ways of conceptualizing the human subject” (Braidotti 2013, 37) that move beyond binary thought as the specificity of humanism, offering an extension of antihumanism and liberation to those previously defined as others. The emergence of genderqueer fashion models is situated in this posthuman context, as their identities were previously those of structural others, and they partly represent these new kinds of subjectivities. Braidotti’s critique presents a counterpoint to my analysis of the ways in which the four genderqueer models trouble gender, as their embodied otherness produces both cultural and commercial value.
Conclusion
Chapters 2 and 3 together frame fashion models’ complex relationship with societal gender ideals, whereby they simultaneously reflect, embody and perpetuate these ideals. Their function has been made even more complex with the emergence of genderqueer fashion models in the early twenty-first century, who undermine traditional heteronormative scripts of fashion modelling. Other defining factors of the fashion-modelling industry further problematise the visibility of genderqueer fashion models, including cultural whiteness and the
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impact of fashion imagery. Collectively, the story of genderqueer fashion models as cultural intermediaries of gender yields key several propositions that this project seeks to test:
• First, this project asserts that the ‘aesthetic labour’ of
genderqueer fashion models is centred on their commercially
embodied gender identity. As cultural intermediaries, the
mediation of their identities as valuable and socially sanctioned
must be performed through their work as fashion models, which
comprises aesthetic labour and promotion of the self. This
project contends that each of the four case study models
performs both these functions in a way that means their gender
identity is an embodied, commodified practice. Through this
positioning, their mediation occurs via their work with their
non-normative gender identity front and centre.
• Second, this project proposes that the work produced by
fashion models is inherently capable of troubling gender while
also contributing to progressive dialogues, both in the emerging
aesthetic language produced by their visual work (their
aesthetic labour) and in the discourse they propel in their
promotion of selves. Further, this project posits that while
reading the impact of fashion images is problematic,
genderqueer fashion models publish their work in specific
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contexts for specific audiences, which in part determines the
impact of their mediation.
• Finally, this project contends that the cultural whiteness
underpinning the fashion and fashion-modelling industries
affects the way in which the emergence of commercially
sanctioned gender nonconformity among fashion models has
played out. This project argues that race and gender are linked
in the progression of this phenomenon, partially fuelled by a
privileged liberal readership. While project does not propose to
be a reception study of fashion imagery, in the following
chapters, it discusses how the work of genderqueer fashion
models may be read, what new ideas of gender it may thus
communicate and how, and in what ways, if any, it may disrupt,
challenge or trouble heteronormative gender.
The following four case studies test these propositions using the photographic, runway and commercial work of genderqueer fashion models, as well as their promotion of self through interviews and media appearances. The analysis aims to demonstrate how these models make gender nonconformity that was previously unseen visible, and especially how they reflect, embody and perpetuate changing ideas of gender in contemporary society.
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Chapter 5: Andreja Pejić
This case study tells the story of, and maps out, Andreja Pejić’s career as two distinct professional practices: pre- and post-transition.
Each of these reveals its own specific cultural mediation around notions of gender and identity. The chapter’s conclusion also offers a rounded discussion of the ways in which Pejić achieves cultural intermediary status. As a case study, Pejić represents a sizeable portion of this project because of her extensive mainstream success as a genderqueer fashion model, as evidenced by her repeated appearances in Vogue US and
Vogue Australia, being the first transgender model to secure a major cosmetics contract and appearing on the cover of GQ Portugal. Unlike the following chapters, this chapter presents a lengthy description and analysis of Pejić’s work and media appearances, as her sizeable career and mid-career gender transition render her a complex cultural subject that requires significant storytelling of her journey. The lengthy analysis of the ways in which Pejić functions as a cultural intermediary through her gender-troubling story also demonstrates the depth of interrogation performed in this project, offering Pejić’s content as a comprehensive example of this.
This study is concerned with how genderqueer models mainstream genderqueer identities, and Pejić’s career is the most explicit example of cultural mainstreaming—it provides ample evidence of this process.
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Andreja Pejić, born Andrej Pejić in Bosnia, 1991, is a transgender fashion model and the most significant case study of this project. She is the first transgender model to have a continuous modelling career pre- and post-transition (2014). In this project, she marks the beginning of the phenomenon of genderqueer fashion models, as she was the first fashion model to work simultaneously across menswear and womenswear. While there were successful contemporary transgender fashion models before her—namely Brazilian model Lea T and French model Ines-Loan Rau—Pejić represents the beginning of a new kind of genderqueer model who actively troubles gender in her work by revealing it as a performance. In addition, although Lea T and Ines-Loan
Rau were certainly pioneering as openly transgender models, their work sits firmly in heteronormative femininity. Conversely, Pejić upsets the established gendered norms of modelling by actively disrupting and challenging the fashion-modelling industry via mixed-gender performances.
After being discovered working the register at McDonald’s in 2008,
Pejić’s visibility as a fashion model intensified around 2010 after she was cast in several well-received fashion editorials. The agent who first signed Pejić to work as a model is said to not have been sure of her gender, but was confident that her aesthetic would nonetheless be a valuable commodity in the fashion-modelling industry (Morris 2011).
Pejić’s look aligns with conventional Eurocentric industry standards for female models and, to an extent, male models. She is 6 foot 1 inch,
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Nordic in appearance, slim and with a pale, clear complexion. She has a slender silhouette and a not overly developed muscular structure, which are typical for both contemporary menswear and womenswear fashion models. Her prominent cheekbones, symmetrical features and striking eyes fit conventional Eurocentric beauty ideals, although her looks were still highly feminine for a standard male model. After graduating from high school and struggling to find representation because of her unconventional appearance as a male model, Pejić moved to London and was eventually signed by Storm Model Management, of Kate Moss fame.
Initial feedback from the industry was that Pejić’s hyper-niche androgynous look would be hard to sell, but it quickly became clear that designers and creative directors relished the chance to use that look to explicitly play on gender in fashion. In this sense, Pejić embodies several tensions of contemporary fashion: her look was conventional, but her identity was not. Following the logic of fashion, where newness is paramount, her androgyny was desirable because it was new and different, but still congruent with the Western cultural system built upon
“aspirational structures of whiteness” (Dyer [1997] 2017, 80) within which Eurocentric beauty ideals are perpetuated.
This project contends that Pejić was a catalyst for a trend in explicitly androgynous-looking models, and her look was soon being mirrored by other up-and-coming talent. While a long history of fashion models and public figures that troubled gender preceded Pejić, it was her capacity to equally present masculine and feminine aesthetics and
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her intentional avoidance of categorisation that set her apart. Her gender nonconformity and ambiguity were celebrated and commercialised by the fashion industry. Despite the media branding her the first androgynous model and making a spectacle of her gender, Pejić created a position for herself as a model working equally in menswear and womenswear. From her early career pre-transition, including runway appearances, fashion editorials and advertising campaigns, her modelling work is rich with themes of gender play and gender subversion.
Pejić’s gender identity is that of a transgender woman, which she began identifying as from her early teens. With the support of her mother, Pejić started puberty blockers (hormone suppressants) from the age of 14—these suppress the more problematic effects of puberty on transgender bodies, including development of body hair, height and muscle growth, and a deepening voice. This therapy is very different from the hormone therapy undertaken by adults transitioning later in life. This aspect of Pejić’s gender experience was not made public until she announced her transition to the media in 2014. Writer Michael
Schulman (2016) of The New Yorker contends that Pejić’s “fine-boned androgyny” was the result of taking hormone suppressants, and this consequent aesthetic is what allowed her to transition easily into womenswear modelling.
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After working as an androgynous model for several years, during which time the media remained fascinated with her as a subject, Pejić underwent gender confirmation surgery in early 2014. She announced her identity as a transgender woman in a coordinated media campaign, including an interview detailing her transition published on style.com in
July 2014, and a short promotional film as part of a Kickstarter campaign for a documentary detailing her transition entitled Andrej(a) (yet to be released) later in 2014. Post-transition, Pejić’s modelling work engages less critically with concepts of gender play; instead, her achievements and role as a spokesperson for the transgender community became a much larger focus of her career. Since 2014, Pejić’s work has mostly been in traditional womenswear and aligns with heteronormative aesthetics of femininity, although her broader public image frames her as an activist for transgender rights and visibility. Her rise to fame has paralleled wider societal shifts towards inclusivity, and as Gregory
(2015) argues, “Pejić’s success neatly coincides with—and embodies—a kind of cultural and political mainstreaming of transgender identity”.
This case study analyses Pejić’s professional work and published interviews to explore how she troubles gender and unpack how she frames her gender identity with cultural and social value as a cultural intermediary. To establish in what ways she troubles gender, a textual and interpretive analysis is performed on a number of her professional works across runway, editorial, commercial and creative contexts. To discern the nature of her mediation, an interpretive analysis of
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interviews, both written and video, and other media appearances is undertaken to examine the ideas and narrative of gender she communicates and promotes through these mediums.
Troubling Gender
Pejić’s early aesthetic is at once highly androgynous and highly transformative, meaning that professionally, she works convincingly across a spectrum of gendered aesthetics. Because of this, her work as a fashion model troubles gender in several ways. Pejić convincingly either performs the norms of binary gender—that is, masculinity and femininity—performs neither, such as androgyny, or performs both in a single context. In some works both pre- and post-transition, Pejić models solely menswear or solely womenswear. Pre-transition, this work troubles gender, as each normative performance of masculinity and femininity causes tensions with her personal androgyny. Further to this, specifically in her early work, Pejić simultaneously models menswear and womenswear in the same show/editorial/advertisement. This dual performance reveals the constructed nature of gendered aesthetics.
Finally, in her post-transition period, she performs normative femininity that is less troubling of gender in her professional work, while setting a benchmark for transgender visibility.
Performing the norms: Femininity In much of her early professional work, Pejić is largely performing as a normative male or female model. Her performance and aesthetic as male or female coincide with the correlating attributes of masculinity or
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femininity, in line with Butler’s ([1990] 1999) explanation of normative gender. As Entwistle (2010) explains, fashion has an inherent capacity to enable performances of gender, as it allows the individual to construct and literally wear their identity. Pejić’s capacity to ‘pass’ as either gender is largely attributed to her transformative looks and her
‘blankness’, or what Schulman (2016) describes as her “fine-boned androgyny”, and her skill as a model in ‘playing up’ to these gendered performances.
In Pejić’s womenswear work, she is indistinguishable from the other female models, and her performance is one of prescriptive femininity.
Many of her early womenswear runway performances were for French designer Jean Paul Gaultier, such as the Fall 2011 Ready-to-wear womenswear show, the Spring 2013 Couture show and the Spring 2012
Couture show. While many of Gaultier’s couture shows mix male and female models, these shows cast largely cisgendered female models, with the exception of Pejić. In these performances, Pejić’s practised technologies of femininity (Craik 1994), such as her feminine walk and demure demeanour, render her consistent with the rest of the models when paired with the feminine styling of her ambiguous features (see
Figure 5.1). However, her position as a male-bodied model at the time makes her performance more complex. On the one hand, her performance troubles essentialist ideas of the relationship between sex, gender and femininity, as she so convincingly performs femininity. On the other, her performance troubles notions of the fashion model as an
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idealised version of gender (Craik 1994), as this embodied ideal is performed by a non-normative identity. This performance is constructed on and by someone who was then known as a male model, which then queers the otherwise heteronormative script of the female model.
Figure 5.1: Pejić in Jean Paul Gaultier Spring 2012 Couture show, Look 41
Pejić frequently modelled womenswear in fashion editorials during the first phase of her career in publications such as Numero, Lovecat,
Vestal and CANDY magazines. In fashion editorial images where Pejić performs as feminine, she is often thoroughly convincing, and the
(secret) knowledge of her actual gendered experience reveals the performed nature of gender and gendered beauty (Butler [1990] 1999).
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It also speaks to the transformative nature of fashion that a sartorial construction is read as gender. Fashion’s ability to visually inscribe and secure identity makes this transformation possible as “clothing, as an aspect of culture, is a crucial feature in the production of masculinity and femininity: it turns nature into culture, layering cultural meanings on the body” (Entwistle [2000] 2015, 137). Prior to Pejić’s transition, these performances are given weight by the assumed knowledge of a male-bodied person performing femininity.
Similarly, a highly prescriptive performance by Pejić of heteronormative femininity is apparent in Netherland company HEMA’s
December 2011 campaign for their ‘Mega Push-Up Bra’ product (Figure
5.2), promising customers a two-cup increase in their bust.
Figure 5.2: HEMA advertisement 2011 for ‘Mega Push-Up Bra’
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Ostensibly, these advertisements depict a beautiful, Nordic-looking woman dressed in two different v-necked dresses, modestly displaying a seemingly proportionate bust. Pejić’s performance here as a woman is thoroughly convincing; to those unaware of Pejić’s actual gendered experience, this is still an effective advertisement that upholds industry standards as a point of aspirational beauty for female customers. If these images are read from the perspective of knowing Pejić’s identity, there arises an element of interest and irony—that is, this product works so well it can turn an ambiguously bodied person into a high-femme seductress. But what is even more interesting than both these potential readings is that at this time, Pejić privately identified as a woman, and these early campaign images may represent an early strategic move on her part to establish herself as a womenswear model.
Performing the norms: Masculinity In a similar mode, Pejić also appeared in numerous works in her early career where she performed as normatively masculine. Since 2010, she has walked in numerous menswear shows for designers such as Paul
Smith, Jean Paul Gaultier, John Galliano, Raf Simmons, Custo Barcelona,
Thom Browne and Commes Des Garçons, among others. In all these appearances, Pejić’s performance as a male model reflects the industry standard and, leaving aside her long blonde hair, makes her aesthetically consistent with the other male models casted. She performs a typical
‘model’ version of masculinity: an unemotive, direct stare, a shoulder- centric stride (versus a feminine hip-centric walk) and a focused-yet-
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detached demeanour (a commonality among most runway models, regardless of gender). Certainly, when styled in masculine garments, she embodies the “skinny boy” male model archetype Rees-Roberts (2013, 7) describes.
To critique a male model’s performance as depicting heteronormative masculinity is misleading. Entwistle and Mears (2012) argue that the act of male modelling is inherently queer. Fashion is a feminised system to begin with and, as Bancroft (2014) argues, “is the only cultural form that defaults to the feminine”. Situated within this feminised discourse is fashion modelling, which is understood as the act of presenting oneself to be viewed and consumed—hence fashion modelling operates as a uniquely inverted gender hierarchy (Entwistle and Mears 2012, 324-325). Evans (2001) argues that in the development of the fashion show, the fashion model positioned the female body as a consumable object of desire. Entwistle and Mears (2012, 321) explain that in entering this system, male models must strategically drag up, and in doing so, they “deploy non-normative gender and sexual identities that, while temporary, and limited to the workplace, have the potential to upset heteronormative discourses”. According to this analysis, the male model by definition is queering the function of the fashion model.
Pejić is further queering this queered function by performing masculinity as a part of a range of professional gender performances, whereas the male model is theorised as having to perform a queered masculinity as a deviation from their ‘stable’ and fixed masculine identity. Pejić’s
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androgynous appearance—especially her hair and facial features—adds to this aesthetic queering. While she is performing this model-specific version of masculinity, aesthetically, her androgyny raises questions and troubles gender.
In fashion editorial images, Pejić’s refined features challenge the idea of the beautiful male, but still register as masculine within the shifted boundaries of the male model’s queered masculinity in its early twenty-first century form. She appeared in numerous menswear shoots in her early career, including editorials in Wonderland, Arena Homme
Plus and Fiasco Homme. Her performance draws on tropes of masculine behaviour, including more aggressive, active poses, an assertive gaze and forming strong, angular lines with her body. But she also shows elements of femininity, such as in her androgynous features and some of her more vulnerable, demure poses. In the editorial “Things are going to change”, photographed by Thomas Lohr and published in i-D magazine in
November 2010 (see Figure 5.3), Pejić has a stripped-back aesthetic and is styled throughout the shoot either shirtless or wearing generic denim and sportswear garments. The images accompany a profile of Pejić that heralds her as the newcomer to watch. The images mainly focus on
Pejić’s natural beauty while positioning her as primarily a menswear model, with minimal artifice and grooming. She stands casually and performs in a range of poses that accentuate her athletic frame and broad shoulders, always highlighting her prominent and androgynous facial features. Throughout, Pejić’s demeanour is active and confident
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(to be read as masculine), but there are moments featuring more delicate poses, and a consistent foregrounding of her long blonde hair.
In this way, Pejić is again both inherently queer as a male model, and queering the function of the male model by giving a nuanced performance that highlights her androgyny.
Figure 5.3: Pejić in “Things are going to change” i-D November 2010, photographed by Thomas Lohr
Performing ambiguity Much of Pejić’s early work from 2010‒2014 saw her performing ambiguity via two main approaches: performing two genders equally in a single context, and as a single, ambiguously gendered aesthetic. This is
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evident across runway performances, fashion editorials and advertising campaigns.
In a significant portion of Pejić’s early runway work, she showcases an androgynous aesthetic paired with an emotionless, blank modelling performance, such as in the KTZ Spring/Summer 2011 show, the Jeremy
Scott Fall 2011 Ready-to-wear show and the DKNY Fall 2014 Ready-to- wear show. This blank performance potentially allows the clothing to communicate its own message of androgyny.
These performances often took place in the context of mixed- gender shows, an increasingly popular approach in contemporary fashion shows and editorial imagery. In fact, since 2016, an increasing number of design houses have responded to the increase in market sales and interest in menswear, and have therefore been eradicating gender- separated shows, with brands such as Gucci and Burberry now only showing on combined runways (Bobb 2016) to present a less gendered product to the consumer.
In these multi-gender shows, where Pejić is positioned among ostensibly normatively presenting male and female models, her ambiguity is even more potent, as designers often style her in more androgynous garments. In walking for a designer, the fashion model becomes, even if fleetingly, a part of a designer’s brand image, representing and embodying the ideals a designer wishes to convey.
Conversely, brands also adopt a model’s brand image. In choosing Pejić
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to walk, designers take on her aesthetic of androgyny and gender trouble. From 2010‒2014, Pejić’s challenging approach to gender signalled the designers who chose her to walk as being aligned with concurrent public debate on gender, as few fashion models possessed
Pejić’s loaded aesthetic capability as part of their image.
Being in demand as the first androgynous model gave Pejić an elevated celebrity status as a model, and designers sought from her image an exchange of cultural capital. Every additional appearance on the runway or in a magazine marks Pejić as a desirable commodity in the fashion-modelling industry; in return, the brands gain Pejić’s symbolic value as a representation of progressive gender ideals. For contemporary models, this exchange of cultural capital is central to their success in the industry, and Pejić’s cultural capital is centred on her unconventional approach to gender.
Between 2010 and 2014, along with her runway work, Pejić featured in numerous fashion editorials that specifically used her ability to perform ambiguity. When analysing this imagery, it is important to keep in mind that Pejić is the site of the image construction, but did not necessarily have creative input; however, many creative directors and stylists are said to have directly responded to Pejić’s androgyny and willingness to play with gender in conceiving and executing these shoots.
Regardless of the extent of her creative input in these gender constructions, they form a part of the message she promotes and, like
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her runway appearances, reflect an exchange: the photoshoot is given more weight in its experimental approach to gender, and Pejić confirms her place in the industry (and within visual culture) as a gender- performing androgynous fashion model for hire.
One such example of this exchange is in the editorial “Gold digger” in Dazed & Confused (April 2011). The images from this shoot (Figure
5.4) reflect an interpretation of gender that moves beyond the binary, and Pejić performs as a site for a sort of ‘post-gender’ aesthetic wherein gender signifiers are abstracted. These images attempt to silence notions of masculinity and femininity altogether, and draw heavily on a futuristic look—one of alien forms, a mechanised body and an abandonment of gender signifiers. The history of gender-neutral futuristic design is long, from Rudi Gernreich’s genderless models to the pop-futurism of the 1960s that featured gender-nullifying acrylic space uniforms. Pejić models a futuristic collection of garments in shades of metallic and techno-armour.
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Figure 5.4: “Gold digger” in Dazed & Confused April 2011 photographed by Anthony Maule, styled by Robbie Spencer
The styling has eradicated Pejić’s identifiable gendered features— instead, the focus is on the forms and interplay of textures around her body. There is a strong machine aesthetic and the sharp-edged, metallic angles give an impression of strength and hardness. Collectively, these images are not about gender, but about aesthetics and beauty on the site of the (future) human body. They visually articulate what a post- gender understanding of beauty might look like. Here, Pejić is a site of a postgender, posthuman aesthetic experiment. Aligning with Braidotti’s
(2013, 37) concept of posthumanism, these images of Pejić offer
“alternative ways of conceptualizing the human subject”, as Pejić’s genderqueer identity has aligned with the utopian, futuristic aesthetic of this shoot to visually articulate new gendered and embodied subjectivities.
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With gendered signifiers silenced on the body in these images, Pejić loses her significance as a model to an extent. Her identity is rendered illegible, as she could in fact be any model. This raises the question: is
Pejić’s strength as a model because of her androgyny and lack of definability, or is it actually because she is in many ways conventional- looking, but her identity is unconventional?
Images where Pejić explores this abstracted aesthetic draw heavily on her conventional, Eurocentric beauty: her imposing height, lean figure and strong facial structure signpost the fashionability of these images. While this in theory could be in any model, there is much to be said of Dazed & Confused’s intention in casting Pejić in this editorial. The abstracted and genderless aesthetics reiterate her lack of definability, and vice versa. This could be any model, but the editorial would not have such a complex reading if it did not feature Pejić.
This aesthetic and the choice of using Pejić align with Dazed &
Confused’s modus operandi of creating avant-garde fashion imagery, and their brand as a conceptual and highly contemporary fashion magazine.
Using an in-demand androgynous model and a futurist aesthetic this editorial attempts to articulate something new—and in fashion, the search for newness is integral.
Another example of Pejić’s work that bears scrutiny is a controversial Dossier Journal cover in May 2011 featuring a shirtless
Pejić was censored and made to be repackaged, as it was considered too
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explicit for newsagent shelves (see Figure 5.5). The cover shows Pejić taking off her white button-up shirt to reveal a flat male chest (which contrasts with her blonde hair in rollers), revealing her bare shoulders and torso; her made-up face is posed forward towards the camera, but demurely facing downwards. Despite the ostensibly masculine chest on display, the image was confusing—it evoked the notion of a topless woman, and thus was deemed too explicit.
Figure 5.5: Cover of Dossier Magazine May 2011, photographed by Collier Shorr
The outrage this cover caused indicates the sensuality of this androgynous image, and highlights the boundaries of the provocative power of gendered ambiguity. The censoring of this image of Pejić is a
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tangible form of gender trouble, of “subversive confusion” (Butler [1990]
1999, 46), in action.
This image presents a more nuanced and delicate treatment of gender. It does not brandish the same sense of commercial sexualisation seen in the HEMA advertisement, and instead presents a more vulnerable, poetic subject. Its censorship brings into focus the tensions of sexualised gendered bodies in fashion imagery and visual culture more broadly. The performance of femininity is being censored, despite
Pejić’s ‘male’ body being the site (which would not usually be censored), highlighting the relationship between sexualisation and femininity in commercial images. The styling reveals a gendered double standard of fashion photography and visual culture, in that a topless woman made visible on a magazine cover is cause for moral panic—so much so that even a (presumed) male body styled as a woman is deemed offensive.
Whether intentionally scandalous or not, the controversy surrounding this image reinforces Pejić’s troubling of gender, and is evidence of her potential to disrupt heteronormativity.
After Pejić signed with Storm Model Management in 2010, her visibility in the fashion industry and popular media increased significantly. In 2011, she walked in several of Gaultier’s shows across both menswear and womenswear, with the designer actively promoting the designer‒muse relationship and claiming that Pejić had been a direct influence in the design process (Loriot 2014). Notably, Pejić walked in
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both the Fall 2011 menswear and Spring 2011 Couture womenswear shows, which took place within weeks of one another in early 2011. The contrasting and controversial use of Pejić in these shows set the tone for her career to follow as an androgynous model. Pejić’s transferability across both gendered catwalks and her ability to actively trouble gender roles within each context became apparent through her ongoing association with Gaultier. Further to this, several media publications increased Pejić’s mainstream visibility. Through this increased visibility, we see Pejić positioned as a cultural intermediary mediating her non- normative gender identity as valuable.
Pejić’s career-defining work in Gaultier’s Fall 2011 menswear and
Spring 2011 Couture womenswear shows provides evidence of how her capacity to perform gender begins to make political as well as aesthetic statements. The Gaultier shows were particularly significant, as the high- profile French designer had been known for exploring strong queer themes in terms of aesthetics and through associations with gay icons such as Madonna since the 1980s. As Pejić reportedly embodied everything Gaultier believed to be the true varied and human nature of beauty, the designer was quick to adopt Pejić as his muse and model
(Loriot 2014, 76). He created both collections with Pejić in mind, blending feminine aspects into his menswear designs and catwalk, but also bringing Pejić’s striking femininity to his womenswear design (Loriot
2014).
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Figure 5.6: Jean Paul Gaultier Fall 2011 menswear, Look 2, 25, 44
Pejić has a highly practised feminine walk and presence. In the menswear show, she exploits this traditional skill in fashion shows to bring a sultriness to the James Bond-themed menswear collection
(Figure 5.6). This in turn gives a bodily sensuality to the garments, which is often lacking from men’s catwalks, and directly contrasts with the hypermasculine subtext of the accompanying music. In fact, James Bond is an icon of British postwar masculine identity who contributed to the reconstruction of young British males after the shock of World War II
(Cook 1996). Pejić’s performance of Gaultier’s golden-locked and coiffed
James Bond challenges the aesthetics of this hypermasculine narrative, but communicates a similar intensity and authority. Pejić’s James Bond unites the notions of feminised beauty with masculine sophistication— perhaps an idealised vision of a sex symbol that sits outside conventional gendered modes of heteronormative beauty.
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In the same month, Pejić was chosen to model the final, traditional bridalwear of Gaultier’s 2011 couture collection (Figure 5.7), in which her ambiguous gender presentation is full of political charge.
Figure 5.7: Jean Paul Gaultier Spring 2011 Couture
The sheerness of the dress reveals Pejić’s body, making obvious, but also celebrating, her flat chest and willowy curves. Pejić’s height and comparative strength paired with her towering headpiece gives this bride a menacing and powerful presence. Pejić as bride disrupts the essentialist (female) identity of the bride and heteronormative marriage.
Taken at face value, this represents a more progressive approach to who
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can own femininity, and who can be celebrated as feminine. However, femininity is also seen as a strait jacket in feminist critique.
Some industry criticism of male models in womenswear (Platell
2011) is that they either intensify or parody the unattainability of female beauty that fashion models promote. However, in the broader context of this collection, Pejić’s performance appears more a comment on the changing definitions of femininity. Specifically, Gaultier had recruited a relatively diverse cast of models of varying cultural backgrounds and ages. Mower’s (2011) critique of the show is that “his women—proud, strong-nosed, ethnically diverse, from any subculture, and of any age” act as a stylised form of protest against the narrow definition of femininity that couture shows generally offer. Pejić brings to this statement her androgyny and gender play, and in return is cast as one of
Gaultier’s icons of diversity.
In several photographic editorials, Andreja plays out the idea of androgyny quite literally, and these works enable richer analysis, even if their themes are rather literal and explicit. In “Victor Victoria” (see
Figure 5.8), published in Elle Croatia in January 2013, Pejić directly references the 1982 film Victor/Victoria, directed by Blake Edwards, in which Julie Andrews double-crosses as a male female impersonator.
Garber (quoted in Phillips 2006, 3) describes the cross-dressing subject as “a useful theoretical figure for the expansion of gender beyond the
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binary structure of male‒female”, “putting into question the very notion of the ‘original’ and stable identity”.
Figure 5.8: Images from “Victor/Victoria” in Elle Serbia January 2013, photographed by Dusan Reljin, styled by Lauren Bensky
As the man in this shoot, Pejić visually represents a clichéd version of masculinity: aggressively posed, possessive and powerful over the female counterpart, and dressed in the angular lines and sombre colours of men’s traditional tailoring. As the woman, Pejić is soft and submissive, led by the man’s touch, scantily clad in delicate lingerie and cowering at male aggression. While these binary characters are extreme and obvious, Pejić performs each role and aesthetic convincingly. The
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audience is given a literal visual reference to the concept of a person possessing both masculinities and femininities that draws on deeply established societal stereotypes. This clearly highlights the performed and (aesthetically) constructed nature of gender (one that reinforces the gender binary), and the highly contrasting standards to which each gender is held in a mutually exclusive fashion.
Between 2010 and 2014, several designers made use of Pejić’s striking transformative ability in their collection advertising campaigns.
In a campaign for Nathan Paul Swimwear Spring Summer 2012/2013 (see
Figure 5.9), Pejić’s body was used as a site for multiple gender performances, creating a series of images that project youth and vibrancy, but also a playful sense of gender play and experimentation.
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Figure 5.9: Images from Nathan Paul Swimwear campaign, Summer 2012/2013
In this campaign, Pejić wears the full range of both men’s and women’s swimwear, and provocatively brings a sultry sexuality to the entire campaign—especially as her androgynous figure and features provide visual ambiguities throughout the editorial. In the women’s swimwear images, Pejić performs a largely heteronormative femininity that is suggestive and sexualised. As the men’s swimwear model, she performs a boyish and waiflike version of masculinity that aligns with the appearance of contemporary male models. This performance of multiple
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genders in a single context capitalises on Pejić’s transformative capacity and clearly demonstrates her ability to trouble gender. Pejic’s performance undermines the notion of fixed and essential gender, and is an example of how “cultural configurations of gender confusion operate as sites for intervention, exposure, and displacement” (Butler [1990]
1999, 43) of regulatory systems which dictate and enforce gender.
Pejić’s pre-transition professional work overwhelmingly and prolifically communicates ideas about gender trouble and gender play.
As demonstrated through the analysis of individual works, each signifies a comment on gender, where Pejić is used as a site for gender play. Her aesthetic capacity for gender play and her transformability reveals the constructed nature of gendered aesthetics. Further to this, it demonstrates how fashion is central to this construction.
Fashion models are theorised as the professionalisation of gendered aesthetics (Mears 2011) and as teachers of techniques of femininity (Craik 1994). Pejić, then, is troubling this function. She has not only professionalised the performance of queer identities, but is visually articulating the notion that the substance of gender is techniques and performance. She performs masculinity and femininity, each as fluidly as the other, demonstrating that they are constructions that can be disconnected from stable identity. Her intentional subversion and transgression of genders is not only troubles gender, but
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mediates the idea that gender is not fixed, but fluid and interchangeable.
Settling in to femininity as a womenswear model Following Pejić’s transition in 2014, her career underwent several shifts. Her public image became more politicised, but also ambiguous, as she became more involved in the discourse around transgender rights; her work became more normative, as it was confined solely to womenswear. Despite this, the increasing presence and validation of her work in womenswear pushed new boundaries for the representation of transgender women in the fashion industry and popular media. She became the first transgender woman and model to receive a major cosmetics contract with Makeup Forever and to grace the cover of men’s magazine GQ. Her role as a cultural intermediary transformed as she used her visibility to contribute to debates on transgender rights.
With the announcement of her transition in July 2014, Pejić refrained from professional fashion modelling work for the remainder of that year. Her “post-transition runway debut” (Yotka 2015) was for the
Giles Deacon Fall 2015 runway (Figure 5.10), a womenswear collection runway featuring other high-profile models such as Kendall Jenner.
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Figure 5.10: Andreja Pejić in Giles Deacon Fall 2015 show, Look 4/31
While Yotka (2015) suggests that “models in the cast were instructed to bring some character to the catwalk”, this was essentially a fairly regular and uneventful runway appearance for Pejić in contrast to those of her prior career. That is, her presence was consistent with the cast of relatively homogenous, heteronormative female models. Indeed, her presence is indistinguishable from much of the work that many cisgendered female models perform regularly.
Since this appearance, Pejić has walked again for Giles Deacon
Spring/Summer 2016, H&M Studio Fall/Winter 2016 and Marc Jacobs
Resort 2017. These performances range from quite feminine, in the case
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of the Giles Deacon runway, to quite masculine but undoubtedly womenswear, in the case of Marc Jacobs. There is no overt theme of gender play or experimentation in these collections or shows, and any perceived androgynous or masculine aesthetics simply reflect contemporary womenswear design itself. These collections might thus indicate a normalisation of androgynous fashion. Pejić’s performances are also consistent with those of other cisgender female models.
Generally, the number of runway shows in which Pejić appears has decreased since her transition, while her advertising and brand ambassador work has greatly increased, and her editorial work has remained relatively consistent. Increasingly, Pejić’s post-transition work is connected to her new position as a transgender spokesperson, focusing on her story and, by association, aligning with transgender issues.
Since her transition, Pejić has featured in fashion editorials for a number of publications, including W Magazine, Love Magazine, Garage
Magazine, Interview Magazine, Marie Claire Spain, CANDY Magazine and
Vogue Espana. In the majority of this work, Pejić largely performs in a normative way and exhibits a conventional and mainstream ideal of beauty. That is, these editorials do not engage especially in gender play beyond the standard level of androgyny in women’s fashion. In this sense, Pejić is answering the questions around her success as a transgender model by continuing to work and be visible as a fashion model, essentially passing as a cisgender one.
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Pejić as Cultural Intermediary: Pre-Transition
While Pejić has aesthetically troubled gender and mediated ideas of gender play through her professional work as a fashion model, another facet of her mediation is achieved through her representations in the broader media. Specifically, in the interviews and profiles published about Pejić, she promotes her brand of androgyny, gender play, humour and relatability via her considered promotion of self. This section documents Pejić’s positioning as a cultural intermediary by performing a close reading of Pejić’s media representations, and her own storytelling.
Following Pejić’s dual performances for Gaultier, several popular news media outlets ran with her story as a human-interest feature. Two notable media appearances were broadcast by the Australian mainstream news program Sunday night (2011) and published by US newspaper The New York Times (Morriss 2011). The former frames Pejić via a quintessentially Australian rags-to-riches story of overcoming adversity; the latter paints her as the latest fashion trend centred on mystery and illusion. Both pieces identify Pejić as an increasingly popular and visible force in the fashion industry and a pioneer of gender play in fashion, while also communicating her personal narrative. Although many fashion news media outlets also reported on Pejić during this period, the mainstream nature of Sunday night and The New York Times indicate Pejić’s representation in popular media.
In August 2011, “The prettiest boy in the world” by Alex Morris was published in The New York Times. This interview provides an insightful
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analysis of Pejić’s engagement with gender, given that, at the time, her transgender identity was still private and the discourse of transgender identities still relatively absent in popular Western culture and media. In this interview, Pejić explicitly identifies her openness to gender play.
When Carine Roitfeld, editor of French Vogue, cast her in a womenswear editorial shoot in 2011, Pejić (quoted in Morriss 2011) explained, “My agency did ask me if I was comfortable with it, but I’ve been dressing in skirts since I was very little, so for me it was ‘Of course’”. She continues,
“I guess professionally I’ve left my gender open to artistic interpretation” (Pejić quoted in Morris 2011). This reveals her candid relationship with the media, as she openly explains her personal experiments with dress and gender; yet it still separates her professional practice from her gender identity, making it clear that she is unfazed by gender play. In the same interview, Pejić goes on to detail her private journey with gender expression:
“The way I need to look, it’s a very personal thing,” Pejić explains. “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.”
Pejić says, “I want to look like me. It just so happens that some of the things I like are feminine”. Here, a pre-transition Pejić challenges the link between beauty and gender, and the notion that a preoccupation with beauty is not exclusive to femaleness.
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As Bancroft (2014) posits, fashion is “routinely denigrated and dismissed”, as it is categorised as feminine and therefore lesser than other masculine pursuits. In heteronormative, binary understandings of gender, an interest in beauty is seen as central to femininity and as a naturalised behaviour for females. While gender and social theory have debunked these causal links, these associations still pervade culture— and yet here, we see Pejić explicitly claiming her joy in the feminine despite being framed by the author’s assumption a male identity. This can be seen as an act of protest and challenging gender, which forms the basis of Pejić’s broader androgynous brand. Conversely, reading these quotations retrospectively and knowing Pejić’s identity as a woman reveals the tensions she had to navigate when discussing her gender identity to the media. Pejić distances herself from drag, overstates the fact that enjoying feminine clothing is not exclusive to being female and manages to greatly underplay her gender experimentation, encouraging it to be perceived as very normal and uninteresting, despite it being her then-sensational point of difference. Moreover, her casual approach to discussing her gender play paints a confident and self-aware image of
Pejić owning her gender play. She is not called to defend her position or campaign for acceptance; she does not attempt to own or alienate femininity, nor does she appear concerned with how her gender identity is perceived. Her lack of self-categorisation was highly challenging to popular discourse around gender at the time and, in retrospect, was a significant precursor to her announcing her transition.
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The language Morris deploys throughout the article reflects both the way in which the media perceived Pejić’s gender pre-transition, and the limited discourse around diverse gender identities that existed in popular media at the time. Morris (2011) comments on the perception of
Pejić’s beauty as challenging to ideals of feminine beauty: “If he [sic] were not a man [sic], he [sic] would be the most beautiful woman I have ever seen in the flesh”. Morris stops short of reflecting further on this, and whether Pejić’s assigned sex at birth is actually of any relevance to that categorisation. Morris’ comments also evoke notions of danger and seduction, further adding to Pejić’s perceived sexual ambiguity. The author’s remarks privilege the male gaze by critiquing Pejić only in terms of her value in relation to heterosexual men, and thus reinforces Morris’ generally heteronormative viewpoint.
However, Morris (2011) does reflect on the label ‘androgynous’: “to even describe his [sic] look as androgynous feels somewhat misleading; most strangers who encounter Pejić do not seem to doubt he [sic] is a woman”. This consideration shows some more critical insight into Pejić’s gender performance, which in reality is not androgynous, but largely feminine, although not heteronormative. Having said this, Morris seems to go on in search of physical evidence of Pejić’s ‘true’ sex (“he [sic] has only the faintest trace of an Adam’s apple”) and comments on Pejić’s lack of facial and body hair, and shaved legs. This analysis more closely reflects attitudes towards gender identity at the time—a discourse that still relies on an essentialist approach to relationship between bodies
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and gender, where physicalities are deemed masculine or feminine and hence are a direct result of maleness and femaleness. In contemporary gender discourse, such as transfeminist theory, to put a queer identity on trial via a person’s body is very much considered out-of-date and exclusionary (Koyama 2003).
Morris’ interview also attempts to address the topic of sexuality, which Pejić consistently avoids in her career. The figure of the fashion model is often associated with high-profile romances and celebrity affairs, but Pejić not only denies any gossip of romance—she denies any categorisation of her sexuality. Morris (2011) labels this “cagey”, and laments that “in keeping with his [sic] philosophy that, for him [sic] at least, gender is irrelevant, he [sic] won’t get specific about who attracts him [sic]”. This again subtly reiterates a mistrust of any categorisation that sits outside the definition of heteronormative binaries, but it is not debated further. Pejić has largely avoided addressing her sexuality in her media representations as she attempts to control this aspect of her narrative.
Interestingly, this interview addresses comments made by Pejić that she would consider having sex reassignment surgery if she were offered a VS campaign: “You’d kind of have to, wouldn’t you?” (Pejić quoted in
Morris 2011). When asked if this was something she had seriously considered, given her tendency towards gender play, she explains,
“Obviously, as a kid you’d think about it—What would life be like if I was
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born a girl? and stuff. But at this point, I’m happy with the situation as it is”. Given the context of this piece being published prior to Pejić’s gender identity being made public, these comments seek to downplay the seriousness of identifying as transgender and normalise a casual approach to gender not being fixed. At the same time, they may have been perceived as flippant, naive or even trivialising of transgender struggles—but with the retrospective knowledge that Pejić did identify as transgender when making these comments, it could be speculated that they were intended to prepare the public for what would transpire.
Most importantly, it is Pejić’s resistance to holding gender sacred, as though she could transition flippantly, that further builds Pejić’s brand around her casual approach to gender.
Morris’ article frames Pejić as a mystery of fashion that needs to be unravelled, but one that is potentially powerful in the present climate. It can also be read as evidence of Pejić as a new cultural intermediary whose work makes contemporary understandings of gender visible. Her approach to gender sets her apart within the fashion-modelling industry, and it is this status as a pioneer that makes Pejić a cultural intermediary in the field. As the first highly successful model working across womenswear and menswear, in media representations such as Morris’ article, Pejić is positioned as an expert and an “authorit(y) of legitimation” (Bourdieu 1990, 96) in the then-emerging discourse of post-gender beauty.
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In the interview “The boy from Broad Meadows” produced by
Australian news program Sunday night in 2011, reporter Rahni Sadler provides a revealing example of early media reactions to Pejić. The news program is populist and sensationalist by nature, operating in the tradition of local exposé journalism. It draws heavily on heteronormative, working-class discourses to present a simplified narrative of Pejić, often drawing on clichés and established stereotypes to craft an easily comprehensible story. In this vein, the piece presented about Pejić takes the content of her story—which strays greatly from the masculine national Australian identity, as it takes place in the “fickle world of high fashion” (Sadler 2011)—and gender fluidity, and paints it as a Cinderella tale and, literally, “the Australian Dream” (Sadler 2011).
The segment opens with an intentionally ambiguous introduction of the success story of a young blonde Australian model, avoiding gendered language, which culminates in a knowing cliffhanger: “But looks can be deceiving …” (Sadler 2011). This language sets the tone for the whole piece, which goes on to detail Pejić’s early life as a refugee, her settlement in Australia and her ‘discovery’ by a talent scout. It interweaves interviews with Pejić's mother and brother, who reflect on her early tendencies towards femininity and dressing up.
The use of clichés and ocker language encapsulates a tension between recognising that Pejić’s gender identity is clearly not heteronormative, and portraying Pejić as a true-blue Aussie battler—for example, “A 19-year-old Aussie bloke called Andrej”, “he’s the boy from
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Broad Meadows who’s suddenly found he’s the girl who everyone wants”
(Sadler 2011). When Andreja is asked if the “fussing” of the stylist on shoot ever gets to her, she nonchalantly answers, “kind of, but it’s better than bricklaying” (Pejić in Sadler 2011). The piece overtly attempts to communicate Pejić’s genderbending as a reasonable,
Australian strategy—a means to an end to escape the blue-collar labourer’s lifestyle. This is done in a tongue-in-cheek way, and the piece plays on Pejić’s own wit to normalise the situation. For example, Pejić explains that in the aftermath of the Global Financial Crisis, designers could not afford a model of each gender, so she was really just value for money. In the previously mentioned Morris (2011) interview, she parodies famous 1980s supermodel Linda Evangelista, claiming “I don’t get out of bed for less than $50 a day”. With her dry, self-deprecating humour, Pejić mediates the value of one of the most iconic signs of
Australianness: the male larrikin unfazed by the glamour of fashion, which aligns with the Sunday night audience’s contentious view of the
‘the fashion industry’—a world that is highly feminised and superficial.
While the Sunday night segment treats the topic of Pejić as overly dramatic and sensational, the subject of gender identity is treated in a positive and humanising way. The commentary from Pejić’s family members promotes warmth and acceptance that her gender play goes beyond a professional strategy, and makes obvious links between the concepts of acceptance and tolerance with immigration and gender diversity. The most significant aspect of this piece is Pejić’s performance
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of self: she is unapologetically feminine in her communication style, but remains aloof and witty towards the novelty of her gender. She avoids labelling her identity in pre-existing terms, and makes light of any confusion, enjoying the ambiguity of fluidity. She easily engages with the reporter’s somewhat crass questions, and rolls with the joke—an aspect presented as highly endearing in the interview, as it reiterates the
Australian trait of ‘not taking yourself too seriously’. In the footage,
Pejić is only 19, still three years away from undergoing gender confirmation surgery—but the casual approach to gender around which she built her brand foreshadowed her eventual transition in the public eye.
These moments of gaining visibility in the media marked the beginning of Pejić being known as the first androgynous model. Her dual performances with JPG marked her as a spectacular and new curiosity in fashion. The mainstream media coverage that followed, exemplified by
Sunday night and The New York Times, used this event to frame her as a wonderment and the ‘hottest new thing’ while simultaneously making her a relatable figure. Together, these moments of Pejić’s career frame her as a cultural intermediary of gender diversity as she progresses from an unknown face to a talked-about figure in the fashion-modelling industry and popular news media.
Framed as the ‘first androgynous model’, Pejić is positioned as a cultural intermediary because of her desirable status as an in-demand
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model, with her expertise in androgyny and gender play. Her nonchalant approach portrayed in the media marks her ownership of this expertise in two ways: first, in her avoidance of categorisation and hence embrace of gender play, and second, in her flippancy on the topic, as though to take it too seriously is equally unfashionable. It is this brand of ‘cool’ that further enforces her as a cultural intermediary, since fashion models consistently project an aura of cool and nonchalance; it is central to their position as fashionable and desirable. This portrayal of expertise is compounded by fashion models generally being viewed as experts in beauty and, implicitly, gender.
Pejić as Cultural Intermediary: Post-Transition
Of the four case study subjects in this project, Pejić has by far the longest and most substantial career. Her longevity in part may be attributed to a distinct second phase of her career, the beginning of which marks another notable moment of her gaining cultural significance, thus strengthening her position as cultural intermediary. In
2014, Pejić announced via a coordinated media campaign that she identified as a transgender woman and had recently undergone sex reassignment surgery, which has also recently been called gender confirmation surgery. Consistently, the media platforms across which
Pejić’s made these announcements repositioned her from an androgynous ‘it’ model, to a passionate model activist and transgender spokesperson. In several interviews and a self-published Kickstarter campaign video, Pejić is careful to not only tell her personal narrative,
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but also voice her interest in transgender rights and her newly adopted role of activist—in effect claiming her new public image. This moment made Pejić a new kind of cultural intermediary whose expertise shifted from androgynous gender play to transgender woman and transgender rights advocate. Pejić’s new brand image was communicated via her transition announcement in a style.com interview, an ET interview and a subsequent Vogue US interview printed in the May 2015 issue.
Fashion critic Katharine Zarrella spoke to Pejić about her transition in the article “Exclusive: Andreja Pejić is in her own skin for the very first time”, published on style.com in July 2014. Zarella’s questioning gives space for Pejić to answer in her own words while addressing the past and future of her modelling career. The introduction acknowledges the successes of Andrej’s career before making a clear breaking point and presenting Andreja. Pejić (quoted in Zarrella 2014) then explicitly identifies as a woman, and explains how she has known this since her early teen years, and knew that becoming a woman was always something she “needed to do”. She explains that she postponed transitioning because of fear of acceptance, and instead “androgyny became a way of expressing my femininity” (Pejić quoted in Zarella
2014).
Pejić discusses her experiences of gender dysphoria from a young age, and how she used psychiatric support and evaluation to undergo gender confirmation surgery. The language used is indicative of the time
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of publication; the term ‘dysphoria’ is increasingly being abandoned, as being trans is thought of less as a pathology that needs curing. Pejić also explains that she identified her gender by associating with feminine behaviours in opposition to her assigned sex at birth. In this account, her gender identity seems to align with relatively normative ideas of femininity, despite her seemingly ambiguous approach to gender in the past. Again, these learned feminine behaviours are what Craik (1992) describes as “technologies of femininity” picked up through the
“technologies of gender” (De Lauretis 1987). Timing is critical to consider here as, in 2014, the level of discourse in the popular vernacular meant that terms such as GNC, nonbinary or transgender were not used without the addition of ‘trans woman’ or ‘trans man’ (i.e., trans was still understood as a binary). Pejić’s ‘coming out’ moment is crucial to this project, because it was the first instance of a model transitioning so publicly.
The style.com article goes on to discuss Pejić’s hopes for the future and her plan to work solely as a womenswear model. Unlike in previous interviews, Pejić does not deflect questions with humour in this article, but instead speaks very candidly about her identity and agenda as a newly out trans woman working in the fashion industry. The main focus of this interview is to tell Pejić’s personal story, although Pejić clearly shows awareness of her position as a potentially influential figure in visual culture. She explains, “My goal is to give a human face to this struggle, and I feel like I have a responsibility” (Pejić quoted in Zarrella
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2014). This suggests that Pejić’s intended mediation of gender issues is to humanise transgender issues and be an activist in the trans community.
The same week as the Zarrella (2014) article was published, US entertainment news program ET released a short interview segment with
Pejić that echoed similar sentiments. Catering to their audience, the ET interview is a simplified explanation of Pejić’s transition: it clings to simplistic explanations of what it means to be transgender, but goes further to align her with other transgender celebrities whose growing prominence signal a shift towards increased transgender visibility in popular culture. What is interesting about this segment is not so much the content—there is no new or more critical information about Pejić presented here—but the nature of ET, which is a highly populist, entertainment-focused platform, as well as the obviously coordinated effort to simultaneously announce Pejić's transition across all platforms.
In fact, the outfit Pejić wears in this interview matches that described in
Zarrella’s piece, and featured on Pejić’s Instagram the same day. This signals a very conscious rebranding effort that was intentionally placed in fashion media, entertainment news media and Pejić's own social media sphere, consistently sharing a repositioned Pejić as an emerging transgender spokesperson and activist. In this way, Pejić has worked to control the narrative of her transition with the goal of repositioning herself into a new sphere of public influence.
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Beyond Pejić’s initial media campaign, the story of her transition was picked up and disseminated across fashion and general news media.
A key piece of media content was published in Vogue US in May 2015. In
“The new world” (2015), interviewer Alice Gregory very clearly sets out to first, unveil Pejić’s back story and humanise her as a transgender woman, and second, contextualise the shift in both the fashion world and broader culture towards acceptance of gender diversity. The article has a strong political agenda that pushes towards real legislative progress for the transgender community. The piece made history as the first profile of a transgender person in Vogue US, and Pejić used this coverage to announce her upcoming post-transition runway debut and similarly history-making beauty campaign for US makeup brand Make Up
Forever. In the interview, Pejić talks specifically about the struggles she encountered growing up, her use of puberty-suppressing hormones as a teen and how she perceives the shift in broader societal understandings of gender. Pejić also explains how, despite her ability to “toe the line between male and female successfully for a long time” (Kogan quoted in
Gregory 2015), she received backlash and was advised to not transition, with naysayers claiming she would “lose what’s special” (Pejić quoted in
Gregory 2015) about her, with one agent telling Pejić, “it’s better to be androgynous than a tranny” (Gregory 2015). This backlash reveals a segment of the fashion industry who viewed this moment of gender politics in society as a fleeting trend on which to capitalise, regarding alternative gender expressions as opportunities for commodifying
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otherness without benefits (Braidotti 2011) as opposed to part of a broader societal shift.
Conversely, Gregory (2015) argues that “Pejić’s success neatly coincides with—and embodies—a kind of cultural and political mainstreaming of transgender identity”. While some figures in the fashion industry interpreted Pejić’s success as a symptom of a gender diversity trend, here, Gregory suggests that her sustained success and increased visibility is connected to broader sociopolitical shifts concerning attitudes towards gender. This article strongly positions Pejić as an active transgender voice and aligns her with this grand notion of the shift: Gregory places her at the front of this revolution. This article was widely circulated across the print and online editions of Vogue, and marks the beginning of Pejić’s public identity as a political figure and trans activist.
Later in 2015, Pejić featured in an editorial and interview in i-D magazine entitled “Andreja Pejić: All about that girl”, which further reinforces this new public identity. The editorial, shot by Cass Bird, has a casual and candid tone, with Pejić shown in various sportswear garments in nondescript interiors, with minimal grooming (see Figure 5.11).
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Figure 5.11: “Andreja Pejić: All about that girl”, i-D 2015, photographed by Cass Bird
The styling choices play up the androgynous nature of sportswear and at times make subtle references to issues of gender. Pejić wears shiny velvet trousers by Gypsy Sport (a streetwear company known for its diverse and subversive model casting), a tight, black sports crop top and a cap saying ‘Breast Wishes’. The styling has interesting parallels to a now somewhat prophetic editorial also about Pejić, “History is gonna change” photographed by Thomas Lohr in i-D magazine in 2010, in which the androgynous sportswear wardrobe, pared-back aesthetic and casual aggressive demeanour is transposed onto this newly introduced woman.
The interview accompanying the updated 2015 editorial is loaded with
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political agenda—it opens with an anecdote that affirms Pejić’s position as both politically engaged trans woman and a feminist:
“You won't be special anymore. You'll just be a woman who can't have kids.” That was the charming reaction Andreja Pejić received when she told a former lover about her plans to undergo genital reconstruction surgery. Andreja's response? “Women are not baby machines. There's a lot more to being a woman, so reducing them to that is quite disgusting. And if I'm so special, why don't you want to introduce me to your friends and family?” Fashion's nouveau femme doesn't waste her time with guys like that these days. She ditched the f*** and kept the feminism (Lees 2015).
The writer outlines Pejić’s experiences of discrimination, describes the lack of understanding with which she has been met and outlines her rejection of essentialist definitions of womanhood. The interview goes on to contextualise the shift around transgender rights, and then attempts to address the question of privilege: “She may have won the genetic lottery, but don't for a second think that Andreja is an uncomplicated child of privilege” (Lees 2015). This interview is quite lighthearted in nature and stops short of any deep critique, but works to further reinforce the public image of trans activist Pejić began to project in the period immediately after her transition.
Since resuming work after her transition in 2014, Pejić has featured in several advertising campaigns, including the Kenneth Cole F/W 2015 campaign and the Make Up Forever ‘Be Bold’ 2015 campaign (with whom she has continued to work). With Make Up Forever, Pejić made history,
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as this was the first major cosmetics contract secured by a transgender model. Throughout the campaign—which comprises videos and advertising images—Make Up Forever align discourses of freedom and
‘being yourself’ with Pejić as a brand, and the transformative capacity of makeup. Here, we have a mutually beneficial alignment of brand identity, with Make Up Forever positioning themselves as progressive and appealing to a diverse customer, and Pejić positioning herself as an elite model with a cosmetics contract, continuing to break barriers as a transgender woman achieving firsts in the modelling industry.
Similarly, Pejić was the first transgender woman to appear on the cover for the Portuguese branch of the men’s magazine GQ in March
2017. The release of this cover intentionally aligned with International
Transgender Day of Visibility on 31 March, with Pejić again making history as the first trans individual to grace the cover of GQ. Formerly known as the Gentlemen’s Quarterly, GQ is a men’s fashion and lifestyle magazine known for content that often focuses on heteronormative masculine interests: cars, sports and beautiful women.
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Figure 5.12: Cover of GQ Portugal March 2017, photographed by Branislav Simoncik
Historically, cover girls have embodied heteronormative ideals of sexual desire, and are explicit objects of the straight male gaze. In this sense, Pejić’s cover aesthetically honours this history. In the cover image, she is posed demurely, but directly looking into the camera seductively. She is wearing garments in neutral tones that show her arms, chest and legs. The flesh on display is mirrored by the fleshy tones of the garments, which act to reveal the body while technically concealing it. Generally speaking, it is visually consistent with previous
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covers of GQ that feature a female model. Consciously adhering to the visual codes of this kind of magazine cover pose, cover girl Pejić is indistinguishable from any other cisgendered model, equally the subject of sexual desire. This challenges the norms of fashion imagery and visual culture more broadly, as trans individuals are not often positioned as objects for sexual desire in heteronormative contexts. The topic of sexuality and transgender individuals is often silenced in the media, with mainstream content mirroring Rich’s (1980) concept of “compulsive heterosexuality”, where only the heterosexual desires of cisgendered individuals are valued, and modes of sexuality outside this norm are considered deviant. This inclusive approach by GQ greatly contrasts with the FHM controversy of 2011, where Pejić was named the 98th sexiest woman alive in the 2011 Top 100 list, but her profile on the FHM website described her in highly offensive and transphobic language, labelling her a “thing” that incited the writer to “pass the sick bucket” (Flock 2011). bustle.com’s Shea Simmons (2017) calls Pejić’s 2017 GQ cover progressive and notes that it “acts as a beacon for other publications” to move towards greater trans visibility. Pejić has featured on many covers since her transition, including the January 2017 National Geographic
Germany gender issue.
Alongside the interviews in fashion media that positioned her as a proud transgender fashion model, Pejić was called upon publicly as a transgender voice in an increasingly growing discourse around transgender rights and visibility. While the interviews Pejić gave around
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her announcement were generally quite formal and serious, in the aftermath, she returned to her humorous, witty style of presentation, now featuring a stronger political agenda. She did this through a range of media outputs beyond the fashion industry, including in award acceptance speeches and publicly aired and published interviews, and when acting as spokesperson in particular media moments, all of which she used to further define her reinvigorated public identity and align herself with contemporary gender debates.
A clear example of this is Pejić’s appearance on Australian popular news program The project in early 2015. The segment opens with a short history of Pejić’s career before moving on to a live interview at the panel desk alongside the show’s hosts. Pejić fields questions about her career and her journey as a transgender woman, and responding warmly and candidly throughout, again using humour to joke and relate with the hosts. The hosts’ line of questioning allows her to speak on transgender issues such as legislation, medical support and high suicide rates. This interview exemplifies the kind of work Pejić has done across multiple media platforms to share her story and frame her visibility using her own narrative, including on numerous US news programs. Pejic’s advocacy of trans issues utilises strategies of narrativity, as it is centered in her own
“story of self” (McAdams 1993, 11) as she draws explicitly on her lived experience as a transgender woman throughout her promotion of self in the media. Although not directly fuelling her professional modelling career, this advocacy is essential for building Pejić’s brand image: that of
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a relatable, warm transgender spokesperson who came from humble origins and now works with the altruistic goal of helping other transgender individuals.
One of the most significant popular cultural events that greatly raised the discourse around transgender identities was the public coming out of former Olympian and reality television star Caitlyn Jenner.
This occurred a year after Pejić herself came out, and Pejić was called on as a media commentator during the event by US populist morning news program Good morning America. To call on Pejić for this commentary positions her as a prominent transgender icon who is essentially accepted within contemporary culture; it also validates her opinion as voice of authority on the topic. The way in which Pejić fields questions during this segment speaks to her sensitivity around commenting on transgender narratives, despite a rather blunt line of questioning from the show’s hosts. In relation to Jenner’s assertions that she hopes to be a better person because of her transition, the male host asks Pejić, “Can changing the outside really change the inside?” Pejić’s response is to first clearly identify the significant differences between her and Jenner’s stories, and then share a personal anecdote about the positive effects that transitioning had on her quality of life. This highlights Pejić’s sensitivity to the nuanced nature of individual gender experience and a resistance to defining another’s story and, indeed, to creating a mould through which other individual transgender stories can be made visible.
The segment goes on to discuss Jenner’s story, and then moves to Pejić
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discussing her own struggles with medical support, outlining this as an area where progress is needed. Overall, this interview positions Pejić as a key figure in the transgender community and a knowledgeable voice on the unique process of transitioning in the public eye. Further to this,
Pejić accompanied Jenner as her date to the 2017 Elton John Oscar party—a clear message of alignment and unity in the celebrity transgender community that again reiterates Pejić’s position as a transgender cultural intermediary and, ultimately, a mutual reinforcement of the nature of their mediations.
Pejić has won several high-profile awards since her transition, and this community recognition has acted as a platform to advance her mediation and as tangible evidence of her industry validation and cultural acceptance. These awards include the GQ Portugal International
Female Model of the year in October 2016 and, in the same month, the
Attitude Icon Award for Lifetime Achievement (part of the Attitude
Magazine Awards, a subset of Virgin magazine). The GQ award was highly significant for Pejić’s profile: she won it over an extensive cohort of cisgender models, and, coming from GQ, a beacon of heteronormativity, the award signals acceptance and thriving success in a largely cisdominated industry and, more widely, visual culture. The
Attitude Icon Award also specifically recognises Pejić as an important contemporary voice and role model. This award sits outside the fashion industry, and is instead given to individuals considered to have an important impact in broader culture. For both the GQ and the Attitude
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awards, Pejić delivered charismatic and humorous acceptance speeches that reflected her modest but self-deprecating presentation style, and always related her success back to her experiences as a disenfranchised refugee and transgender woman. As in other media interviews, these speeches reiterate her image as a relatable figure working to raise the profile of transgender issues.
Collectively, Pejić’s visibility in the media post-transition articulates her role as a transgender spokesperson whose personal narrative may act as aspirational for others. The strategic nature of her post-transition rebranding campaign is an evident departure from Andrej, the first androgynous model and gender troubler, who is reframed as Andreja, transgender woman, model and spokesperson. This strong demarcation is one of extremes: where before, Pejić’s image centred on ambiguity, fluidity and gender play, the second phase of Pejić’s career centres on femininity alone. In this, it is apparent how Pejić has clearly embodied two kinds of cultural intermediaries. First, she mediated ideas about gender play and androgyny, indicating its value as a fashionable aesthetic. Later, Pejić became a cultural intermediary focused on transgender issues via her narrative as a transgender woman and fashion model.
Conclusion
The aims of this case study were twofold: first, to analyse what ideas about gender Pejić mediates within her visible output as a fashion
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model, with a view to ascertaining how her work troubles genders; and second, to analyse what and how she mediates in mainstream culture.
The chapter has shown that Pejić becomes a cultural intermediary through her promotion of self in the media. These aims have been approached by investigating Pejić’s brand via professional work and broader media engagement that define the nature of her visibility. It is evident that she troubles genders through multiple strategies that have shifted pre- and post-transition; her achievements occur through the work in which she chooses to be involved, and careful curation of the messages and narratives she communicates via the media.
As an androgynous model, Pejić convincingly performed multiple genders. This practice evokes several key ideas from both gender and fashion theory. First, her capacity for ambiguity paired with her ability to convincingly perform as a man or woman aptly visualises Butler’s ([1990]
1999) notion of the performed nature of gender. Butler argues that a performance of gender is gender, and that there is no true gender that underpins performances of it. In the case of Pejić, the diversity of her gendered performances leaves the audience unable to define her ‘real’ gender, and confronts them with the notion that all gender is in fact performed and performative. This ability to perform both genders also speaks to Mears’ (2011) definition of the fashion model as a site for the performance of masculinity and femininity, and her argument that fashion modelling is the professionalisation of gender performance.
While Pejić quite literally embodies these ideas, she challenges them by
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performing both masculinity and femininity at once, rendering the fashion model’s personal gender identity as separate. This has links to
Entwistle and Mears’ (2012) notion that the work of the male model
(which Pejić was assumed to be in 2010) is inherently queered in the inverted gender hierarchy of fashion modelling. While to call Pejić a
‘male’ model is contentious, she did queer the practice of modelling, where queering is understood as a methodological approach that rejects heteronormative practice and “call(s) attention to harmful norms and expectations” (Goldberg 2016, 910) — in this case, the norm being a cisgendered model giving a heteronormative performance.
In the first phase of her career, Pejić embodied the tensions in society towards individuals whose gender presentation did not directly reflect their assigned sex at birth (i.e., queer-gendered). As one of the first models to build on this tension as a cornerstone of her mediation, she was faced with navigating a largely uninformed public who would revert to simplistic and binary understandings of gender to interpret her identity. Pejić’s reaction was one of confidence and likable, humorous ambiguity. Her lack of focused political agenda on this issue may have contributed to her popularity, and her resistance to categorisation defined her mediation. This approach of rejecting categorisation and protest against heteronormative definitions speaks clearly to the tradition of queer theory and activism. Queer theory’s key ideological argument is that despite “notions of identity as coherent, stable, and natural”, it advocates for “the multiplicity, fluidity, and ambiguity” of
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identity, specifically of gender and sexuality (Landau 2012, 295). Further, as mentioned previously, a cornerstone of queer theory is the use of queering as a method of analysis and disruption. By building her model‒ brand identity around ambiguity, Pejić is queering the relationship between fashion model and gender, and hence exposing the function of the fashion model as largely heteronormative. By queering this function,
Pejić has the capacity to critique and redefine theoretical understandings of the fashion model.
Pejić actively worked to disrupt the association between beauty and normative femininity and its relation to essentialist notions of biology.
She achieved this primarily through her professional outputs as a fashion model, which were reinforced by the personal narrative presented in the interviews she gave. While on reflection, the discourse around her gender play still sat largely within the gender binary, it is important to note that popular culture, especially populist fashion discourse, was not yet at the stage of understanding or discussing gender identities beyond the gender binary, evidenced by the frequent and loosely defined use of
‘androgynous’ to describe Pejić's aesthetic. To this extent, Pejić challenged this lack of language, and provoked the question of why gender matters when it comes to questions of beauty. Her intentionally casual attitude towards gender, the confidence she expressed in her ambiguity and her willingness to be the site of experimentation all built her brand as the first ‘androgynous’ model to work simultaneously in both menswear and womenswear. Pejić’s approach to gender as a
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fashion model was new and challenging in the industry and moved into uncharted territory for a career centred on gender, particularly femininity.
Pejić’s transition was a strategic shift from an androgynous model to a solely womenswear model and passionate transgender spokesperson. She knowingly used the power of the fashion and entertainment media to share a controlled announcement of her transition, particularly in the Vogue US interview, answering the many expected questions pertaining to her prior career and the details of her gendered experience. This thoughtfully planned announcement ushered in a new phase of Pejić’s, and meant that her newly transitioned self was met by an overwhelmingly positive reception, both in the general media and the fashion industry. Again, her previous likability and consistent nonchalance towards gender positioned her to be taken seriously and accepted when she eventually made the announcement. This event speaks to the media’s capacity to humanise and call for acceptance of trans identities and highlights the media’s—especially fashion media’s— capacity to reframe conversations that mediate more progressive, contemporary ideas of gender.
Since her transition in 2014, Pejić’s professional work has been less critical in terms of troubling heteronormative gendered aesthetics, but her public profile as a transgender spokesperson has risen significantly.
She has become a welcome commentator on current affairs involving
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transgender issues, has been widely recognised with professional accolades and has become an icon in the transgender community. This again reflects the tradition of queer activism and, more importantly, transfeminism. While in one way, Pejić’s initial ambiguity was an act of queer resistance and transgression, her transition and subsequent call to visibility is an act of queer activism. To make her story highly public and the basis of her brand image is a very literal form of activism, as Pejić speaks publicly on trans issues such as medical support and legislation.
Conversely, in a way, her work as solely a womenswear model is no longer queering the function of the fashion model—rather, she is now, as Mears (2011) suggests, performing prescriptions of femininity.
However, as Elliot (2010) contends, her highly visible and scrutinised transgender body has become a public domain for analysis via which cultural anxieties around gender are discussed. Pejić uses this scrutiny to explicitly speak out on trans issues, coupling the discourse of trans politics with the aesthetic weight her image holds in visual culture. Using her visibility in this way, then, is just as disruptive to the heteronormative systems dominating fashion, beauty and visual culture.
This chapter has investigated the way in which Pejić represents a number of tensions in contemporary gender discourse and how her varying approach to gender not only queers the function of the fashion model, but was used to build a model‒brand identity centred on troubling gender. This analysis has revealed that she is an important figure for the beginning of the period of genderqueer fashion models.
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She represents the first significant challenge to the relationship between the function of the fashion model and gender: both her early resistance to categorisation and, later, her vocal trans activism have repositioned the fashion model as an important and visible cultural intermediary in the popular discourse of gender as it plays out in contemporary culture.
The discussion of Pejić’s trajectory is a framework for three further case studies of genderqueer fashion models, all of whom have emerged following Pejić’s career. The following chapter discusses and analyses the trajectory of Casey Legler, a French-born woman working solely in menswear.
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Chapter 6: Casey Legler
This chapter explores the work of American fashion model Casey
Legler. Currently, Legler works across both menswear and selected womenswear, and has a diverse creative portfolio. For this study,
Legler’s editorial, runway and commercial work as a fashion model, a written essay published in The Guardian and interviews pertaining to her fashion practice are analysed; her visual art practice, while relevant, is beyond the scope of this study. She continues to make and present her art, and has a published memoir entitled Godspeed, which was released in July 2018. Legler is married to Australian Siri May, and now lives between New York and Sydney.
Legler was born in 1977 to American parents in the south of France.
She is an artist and former athlete who made headlines in 2012 when she was the first woman signed to the Ford Models men’s board. Legler
(2013) self-identifies as a gay, butch, GNC, queer biological female whose otherness, she explains, is furthered by her above-average height of six feet two inches. Legler is a unique case study in that her work, albeit a relatively small portfolio compared with the likes of Pejić, is very often accompanied by her commentary, through which she frames the discussion around her body and gender. Beginning in 2012, Legler’s career progressed alongside Pejić’s, with whom she is a highly visible figure in the phenomenon of genderqueer fashion models.
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Legler identifies as a woman, but as masculine-presenting. She identifies as GNC, but not as transgender. Though she has a significant history of activism, she is less focused on fighting for the rights of specific identities, but rather takes a broader theoretical and political standpoint about the notion of difference and its representation. Her position is informed by and critiques interconnected social issues not only including the gender binary and the patriarchy, but capitalism and systems of representation more widely (Legler quoted in
NewYorkLiveArts 2017). In this sense, Legler provides a very different viewpoint from the increasingly commercial figures of Pejić and Hari Nef
(see Chapter 7). Legler’s practice as a fashion model is somewhat detached from the model’s traditional function, and more connected to her performance-based art practice and ideological message.
Legler describes her practice as a fashion model as a continuance of her broader practice of bodily performance (Legler quoted in Baldwin and Berman 2013) and the most public form of her art practice (Legler quoted in Here TV Premium 2013). She approaches modelling as a platform through which she actively seeks agency to mediate her message. As a writer, artist and academic, her message is explicit, intentional and challenging. This chapter unpacks the nature of her political perspective, as well as how her work as a male model (and occasional womenswear model) troubles gender through her embodied performances.
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Unusually tall from a young age, with an athletic build and talent,
Legler was a competitive swimmer by age 13 (Schafter 2015); her swimming career would take her all the way to the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta. Legler often refers to her history as an Olympian as a source of contention, marred by feelings of exclusion and loneliness. At one of her final swimming meets, after coming out as queer, she was banned from using the women’s change rooms, and explains that this partly contributed to her decision to retire from swimming in 1998 (Legler quoted in Schafter 2015). After retiring from the sport, Legler moved on to study law, architecture and medicine before graduating from Smith
College with distinction.
After graduating, Legler moved to New York to pursue an artistic career. Legler’s visual art practice is largely performance-based and often collaborative, exploring notions of identity and the body. Her path to modelling was a “complete accident” (Legler quoted in Carrera 2018) and began with an invitation from photographer friend Cass Bird to feature in an editorial entitled “Out with the boys” for Muse Magazine
(2012). Bird then connected Legler with Ford Models agent Emily Novak, who would become Legler’s agent. Legler was signed to Ford’s men’s board in 2012, and became the first woman signed as a professional model to exclusively model menswear.
Legler (quoted in Schafter 2015) argues that becoming a male model was not challenging for her: “I was put in men’s clothes because I
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fit in men’s clothes. The only thing that is particularly unique is that I’m biologically a woman”. In an interview for women’s sexual health organisation Claude, Legler notes the challenges to retaining agency at the beginning of her career, when stylists tried to dress her in womenswear. She recounts how earlier in her career, creative directors would often expect her to dress in womenswear despite having bookings for her as a male model. Legler faced obstacles trying to retain agency over how she was photographed, as she was very aware of how those images could be used. She explains that in these scenarios, she would have to tell directors that “what they were seeing in the image was actual masculinity” (Legler quoted in “Casey Legler | Women, health, sex, art” 2014), and she needed to be treated as a male model. She clarifies, “I'm not androgynous … there is no ambiguity with me” (Legler quoted in Wiseman 2013).
Troubling Gender
Like Pejić, Legler troubles gender via several strategies. As the first woman to be signed to exclusively model menswear, she troubles gender initially by professionally performing a heteronormative ideal of gender that sits in contrast to her sexed body. Once Legler’s work extends into womenswear, gender is troubled in a different way. While Legler identifies as a woman, she largely presents with a masculine aesthetic— what Halberstam (1998) deems “female masculinity”. In her professional work, her rare performances of normative femininity clearly contrast with her own aesthetic of female masculinity, challenging the notions of
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‘naturalness’ pervasive in normative thinking. For Legler, her masculine presentation is natural, and femininity is a performance, despite her female sex. In some work, she models a queered version of femininity that reflects her aesthetic and, in doing so, challenges prescriptive associations between womanhood and normative femininity as it plays out in the arena of fashion and makes visible more diverse embodied gender expressions. Finally, to make Legler’s troubling of gender more complex, she publicly challenges the notion that her practice is about gender at all. Through her insistence on agency and incorporating her fashion modelling into her broader performance practice, Legler forms her own body of language around her work and, in the process, argues that her work is about a visible language of difference, not simply gender.
Performing as a male model In much of Legler’s work, she presents as a normative male fashion model. Unlike womenswear, menswear generally conceals the body and shapes it through structured tailoring. Examples of Legler’s work that shows her modelling menswear include an editorial photographed by
Julian Broad for Observer Magazine in March 2013 (Figure 6.1), British label All Saints’ Spring 2013 campaign (Figure 6.2) and a runway appearance for Michael Bastian Fall 2013 (Figure 6.3). Legler has had very few runway appearances, working more significantly in editorial and advertising campaigns. This is possibly because of her insistence on text
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accompanying images of her body, which is discussed later in this chapter.
Figure 6.1: Casey Legler photographed by Julian Broad for Observer Magazine March 2013
Figure 6.2: All Saints Spring 2013 “Portraits of a collection” campaign, photographed by Roger Rich
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Figure 6.3: Michael Bastian Fall 2013, Look 30/34
In these works, Legler’s performance as a male model is not controversial. Her body is concealed and her face can easily be read as that of a male model, with the refined features typical of many contemporary male models. Like Pejić, in this context, it is the secret knowledge of Legler’s actual gendered experience that makes the work challenging. Legler is read as a male model, and in this way, her performance troubles gender. Without the knowledge of Legler’s sexed body and gender identity, audiences may read Legler as a fairly standard menswear model. However, in some of her menswear work, her body is revealed for a more conspicuous troubling of gender.
Legler’s performance in the editorial “Out with the boys”, shot by
Cass Bird, troubles gender in a very clear and direct way. In Legler’s own
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words, the work was conceived as intentionally messing with gender roles, with Bird seeking out more masculine-presenting women to play the role of the ‘boys’ (Schafter 2015). This is a clear example of Legler as a cultural intermediary accessing social networks in a professional context, and how this in turn means that her gender identity and aesthetic are foregrounded in the collaboration. In the shoot, Legler models alongside Candice Swanepoel and Erika Linder in a collection of industrial and dockside settings. Swanepoel is the focus of the shoot
(Figure 6.4), and while her classic European features and long blonde hair are styled to appear somewhat ‘grungy’, she is clearly the normative feminine figure and centrepiece of the shoot, and therefore the site of fashion. More interestingly, Legler and Linder are positioned as her
‘gang’, accompanying her in several images smoking cigarettes, walking in formation and positioned in casual conversation with Swanepoel. They wear short, spiky hairstyles and wear the same masculine attire throughout, including jeans, leather jackets, sneakers and t-shirts.
Despite these garments being relatively genderless in a contemporary context, the styling on Legler and Linder is intentionally masculine, as their bodies are rendered flat and square—this is enhanced by their postures and jutted jawlines.
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Figure 6.4: Excerpts from “Out with the boys” featuring Candice Swanepoel, Casey Legler and Erika Linder, photographed by Cass Bird, published in Muse 2012
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Figure 6.5: Linder, Legler and Swanepoel (left to right) in “Out with the boys”, photographed by Cass Bird, published in Muse 2012
One image in particular positions gender as a tension in this shoot.
In Figure 6.5, Swanepoel leans casually against the wall, lit cigarette in hand. In this image, Swanepoel is off to the side, but stands apart; her trousers are a coral colour and she is blonde and in a Marilyn Monroe- like pose, seemingly looking at the camera with a sultry expression.
However, the drama of the image that attracts the viewer is what is going on next to her: Legler and Linder, their genders not clearly defined, are intimately lighting a cigarette, hunched against the wall and leaning towards one another. Legler’s physicality raises the question of gender through her masculine body and styling. Her stomach is bared to further the ambiguity, but simultaneously, her bust is covered, alluding to censorship of her breasts. Without this element, Legler’s styling, body
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posture and aesthetic might be read entirely as male, and even with this censorship, she can be read as masculine. The simultaneous exposure and concealment of Legler’s body intentionally raises the question of gender and reveals the precariousness of gender along with its subtlety.
In fact, the specific grouping of models, along with the title and styling choices, signals it as an intentional play on heteronormative gender. Both Linder and Legler are known as masculine-presenting women, with both often modelling menswear and being labelled
‘androgynous’ more broadly by fashion media. Conversely, Swanepoel is a highly feminine model with a mainstream, Eurocentric aesthetic, and is best known for her work with VS. The grouping of these three models reveals two vastly contrasting approaches to female embodiment: one heteronormatively feminine, the other queer and subversive.
Consequently, this opposition reflects a spectrum of gendered aesthetics. Collectively, the editorial troubles gender because it represents a range of gender expressions that, in their visibility and validation through being presented by fashion models, legitimise a range of identities for individuals assigned female at birth. If, as we know from
Mears (2011), fashion models are theorised as prescriptions of femininity, this editorial prescribes multiple identities and multiple femininities as legitimate and denies the notion of a singular, stable, heteronormative ideal of womanhood.
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The title of the editorial, “Out with the boys”, denotes ideas of rough-and-tumble lad culture, aligned with the clichéd heteronormative sentiment ‘boys will be boys’. While referring to Swanepoel’s masculine- presenting gang as boys is not overly radical, the contrast between the title and the models’ gender is a direct troubling of gender. Legler and
Linder represent what it means culturally to be ‘the boys’: they are cool, edgy and look like trouble. The fact that these boys are women is essentially irrelevant in terms of the aesthetic and feel of these images.
It more specifically positions masculinity as an attitude, not a natural innate quality of a biological male body. This recalls Halberstam’s (1998) argument that masculinity is a set of learned behaviours that are not necessarily linked to sex. Despite cultural “myths and fantasies about masculinity that have ensured that masculinity and maleness are profoundly difficult to pry apart” (Halberstam 1998, 2), Halberstam asserts that “masculinity has been produced by and across both male and female bodies” (2), clearly demonstrated here by Legler and Linder.
Beyond Bird’s work, Legler has often troubled gender through the revealing and concealing of her body. In Diesel’s Fall/Winter 2013
#DIESELREBOOT campaign, Legler is part of a cast of models reflecting differences from the normative model body and identity. The campaign features a diverse range of creatives cast from social media platforms and nontraditional avenues. The chosen models, including Legler, a plus- size graffiti artist and heavily tattooed models, among others, are
“people who are beautiful in their own unique way” (Formichetti quoted
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in Brown 2013). Rachel Brown (2013) of Women’s Wear Daily explains that Diesel’s creative director Nicola Formichetti intended the campaign images to “merge classic portraiture with the sensibilities of the current generation of digital influencers”.
Figure 6.6: Casey Legler for Diesel, F/W 2013, photographed by Inez and Vinoodh
The images shown in Figure 6.6 each featured in the campaign and appeared across various digital and print platforms alongside a collection of portraits of other subjects. In the campaign, Legler appears self-styled in denim jeans and a sleeveless denim vest. The first image is highly ambiguous and could accurately be labelled androgynous. Legler’s refined but strong facial features and short, styled haircut cannot be placed as traditionally masculine or feminine. Her body is concealed by a denim vest, a garment that can only be read as genderless in a contemporary context of globalised fashion. In this image, she lives up to media coverage of the campaign, promising an androgynous model
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who breaks gender boundaries (Brown 2013). The second image carries this same ambiguity in its styling choices, but Legler’s partially exposed chest troubles gender. The subtle shadow of a breast might signal a female body, but Legler’s lithe build and the length of her body render her body more ambiguous despite this revealed detail. Unlike Pejić, the exposure and concealment of Legler’s body are not as easily read as a
‘gimmick’. Where Pejić is styled extremely femininely only to have her body revealed as a ‘twist’, the display of Legler’s body does not actively answer the question of gender. Her overall aesthetic is difficult to read through gender, and these small moments of discord work to trouble gender in a way that leaves questions of gender unanswered.
Formichetti characterises his casting choices as promoting diversity, and Legler might agree that ideologically, this campaign aligns with her own motivation to address the visibility of difference in fashion media.
However, a more critical analysis of this casting strategy might align with
Rosi Braidotti’s (2011, 27) concept of “commodification of differences”.
Braidotti’s work in “nomadic theory” explains how, in neo-capitalism, those who are ‘othered’ in society are recast as commodities in an attempt to make new revenue streams. In this way, capitalism bends and moves around changing social discourses, and continues to function in a new social era.
Performing non-normative femininity While Legler performs as a male model in the majority of her fashion modelling, in some work, she performs more explicit versions of
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femininity by modelling womenswear. Unlike Pejić, who is completely transformed into both normative masculinity (or the queered version of masculinity performed by male models) and femininity, Legler’s performance of femininity is centred on her commercially embodied female masculinity. These works more acutely trouble gender with Legler as the site of fashion.
Legler has only been modelling womenswear more consistently since 2015. A contemporary example of her womenswear performance appeared in Vogue Italia July 2017, photographed by Craig McDean and styled by Alastair McKimm. The editorial is entitled “YSL” and features a
Saint Laurent collection by Anthony Vaccarello. The shoot features a cast of eight models, including Chloe Sevigny. Their collective aesthetic is dark and edgy, communicating a powerful feminine sexuality.
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Figure 6.7: Legler in “YSL”, Vogue Italia July 2017, photographed by Craig McDean
Legler features in a single portrait in the editorial (see Figure 6.7), in which her aesthetic is consistent with the rest of the shoot. Wearing a black leather jacket, short skirt, stockings and heels, Legler is styled unequivocally in a quite sexualised version of feminine dress. The hint of makeup darkening her eyes, her pronounced legs and her dark, confident stare create the impression of menacing female sexuality. This image speaks to a statement Legler (quoted in Time 2012) made in an interview for Time magazine in late 2012:
Is it a stretch for me to get styled wearing men’s clothes? I mean, anyone can look at me for two seconds and see that that part is actually not so complicated. I think the part that can feel complicated sometimes is that I also look really fierce in a dress … you know … and I’ve been taught by the best queens about
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how to rock some heels. And I think that that’s where it gets exciting is just that fluidity that I celebrate.
In this image, Legler is commanding and embodies a performance of femininity, dressed in womenswear among a cast of other female models. While Legler’s version of femininity is quite edgy and brazen, it is still very much situated in the realm of mainstream representations of women in fashion images because of the commonly used symbols of female sexuality, such as exposed legs and high heels. As Legler is consistently seen commanding a masculine performance, this is fairly challenging in terms of her overall mediation of gender identities.
In 2015, Legler modelled for Australian activewear label THE UPSIDE in the second instalment of their ‘Be You’ womenswear campaign; this was Legler’s first official womenswear campaign. Also featuring former
Australia’s Next Top Model contestant Tahnee Atkinson, the campaign aimed to explore “diverse definitions of femininity and broadening the conversation of what it means for people to accept themselves” (House
2015). As shown in Figure 6.8, Atkinson’s appearance in the campaign features much more normative feminine aesthetics and includes garments that are considered more typical women’s activewear. Media coverage of the campaign maintained that it was “a reflection on popular culture engaging in the conversation on gender and identification” (Schmidt 2015), and Legler (quoted in Frank 2015) sung the campaign’s praises as a celebration of diversity that aimed to “widen the spaces the women can take up”.
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Figure 6.8: Tahnee Atkinson in THE UPSIDE’S “Be you” campaign
Figure 6.9: Legler in “Be you” 2015 campaign, THE UPSIDE, photographed by Jez Smith
Figure 6.10: Legler in “Be you” 2015 campaign, THE UPSIDE, photographed by Jez Smith
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Figure 6.11: Legler in “Be you” 2015 campaign, THE UPSIDE, photographed by Jez Smith
The images of Legler in this campaign are set in industrial, urban surrounds and use a pared-back and moody colour palette of grey, black, green and silver. Similarly, Legler is styled in a restricted palette of activewear, including black mesh tanks and t-shirts, grey basketball shorts and branded singlets, and camouflage print leggings and windbreakers. While Legler looks quite sombre and reflective in several of the images, a series of three show her animated and laughing, exhibiting relaxed stances and a relatively natural composure.
Collectively, these images deny a simple or surface reading of gender.
Legler is ambiguous-looking, and though the images present a hard edge, many show her at softer angles and highlight her delicate features. Her body language does not explicitly draw on the gendered poses used to signal the assertive male or the demure/subject-of-the-gaze female
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common in fashion imagery. Similarly, the garments themselves are ambiguous, if not leaning towards masculine. They have standard sportswear silhouettes, and are less gender-specific. In this sense, these images do not so much actively challenge gender, because gender is not really communicated—what is communicated is Legler’s personal aesthetic and demeanour. If the aim of the campaign is to reflect different femininities, then these images of Legler reflect her specific embodied femininity, which here is really more about her embodied femaleness. Employing Legler as a model of femininity in this campaign, and setting her against the contrasting normative femininity of Atkinson, makes a statement about diverse femininities and female embodiment.
Similar to the Cass Bird editorial, this campaign validates a range of identities belonging to those assigned female at birth.
In “Double vision”, photographed for Michael Donovan for
FourTwoNine magazine’s inaugural issue in 2013, Legler featured alongside a male model in a photo essay “exploring gender, androgyny and perception” (FourTwoNine et al. 2013).
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Figure 6.12: Casey Legler in “Double vision” for FourTwoNine Magazine 2013, photographed by Michael Donovan
The photo essay follows the interaction between Legler and male model Jonjon Battles, a New York-based DJ. It begins with a striking image of Legler in a men’s suit sitting and leaning forward on a chesterfield lounge, staring assertively at the viewer. Legler reads as normatively masculine, her features sharpened by the square lines of her suit and her expression drawing on a stereotypical masculine posture and assertive expression (see Figure 6.12). As the shoot progresses, a collection of images shows Legler engaging intimately with Battles at different levels.
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Figure 6.13: Casey Legler and Jonjon Battles in “Double vision” for FourTwoNine magazine 2013, photographed by Michael Donovan
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Figure 6.14: Casey Legler and Jonjon Battles in “Double vision” for FourTwoNine magazine 2013, photographed by Michael Donovan
While the editorial begins with overt heteronormative content, it quickly shifts to themes of gender play and ambiguity. It begins with
Legler intimately kissing Battles and the two laying together on a bed and couch (see Figure 6.13). Throughout these images, Legler is still dressed in her signature masculine style, but with an element of softness styled into her look—including soft curled hair, which is particularly noticeable in the portrait of the kissing couple. This is followed by some transition images: Legler, again pictured in her suit with her tousled hair, in a street setting, followed by an image of Battles and Legler in a domestic setting, wearing similar outfits. In this image, Legler’s chest is partially bare, as is Battles, and there is an aesthetic parallel between the two; they appear not as lovers, but as two similar people existing
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independently from one another. Finally, the shoot shows the Legler’s transformation into a traditionally feminine woman. In one image,
Battles stands behind Legler, ostensibly helping to do her hair; in the next, he carefully paints her nails. In this image, we see Legler in full feminine attire, including wig and makeup. In the final image, we see
Legler fully transformed, in a long formal dress and heels, staring at the viewer with a sombre expression, her side-angled body slightly leaning back, one arm raised with a limp wrist. This final image (see Figure 6.14) depicts Legler styled to perform normative femininity, but there is a haunting awkwardness to her look, and it reads as quite a stark and unsettling finale.
Legler’s performance in this editorial troubles heteronormative gender in several ways. First, it represents a queer love story between two masculine-presenting subjects, and normalises it in a familiar domestic setting. Next, showing Legler’s transition into a feminine subject troubles gender, as it works to both highlight the constructed nature of such an aesthetic on her, and show unease in the final feminine aesthetic. However, in her final state, Legler presents largely as a cisnormative woman, which sits in extreme contrast to her aesthetic at the beginning of the series. As a whole, the shoot speaks to the fluidity of gender and layers of gender construction, and works to disrupt the stable, heteronormative ideal of embodied femininity.
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Collective troubling Similar to her appearance in the Fall/Winter 2013 Diesel campaign,
Legler often features alongside other genderqueer models whose joint publication collectively make a comment on gender. In June 2013, Legler appeared alongside Andreja Pejić in Vogue Brasil in the feature entitled
“Liberdade de escolha”, or “Freedom of choice”. Photographer Mario
Testino portrays the models naked, with each posed in a way that emphasises a performance of gender that sits in contrast to their bare, sexed bodies (see Figure 6.15). Andreja, who was still viewed publicly as a male model at this time, is posed with one hip forward and her body slightly turned from the camera, emphasising her curves. One hand with painted nails covers her pubic area, while the other rests on her thigh.
Along with her trademark long blonde locks and soft feminine facial features, this pose overwhelmingly emphasises the femininity of Pejić’s body. However, much like the Dossier Magazine cover image, Pejić’s bare masculine chest signifies a tension with the gender performed here.
Similarly, Legler’s body is posed in a decidedly unfeminine pose. Her arm is raised at a sharp angle in a side-on stance, with her hand resting on her chin. The angle at which her head is turned towards the camera makes her jaw jut and gives strong, angular lines to her face. Her stern expression reads as aggressive, and her slumped, side-on posture works to highlight the muscles and bones in her body, making it look athletic and lithe. Along with her short hair and tattoos, Legler appears quite masculine, but her exposed breast again reveals a tension.
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Figure 6.15: Andreja Pejić (left) and Casey Legler (right) in “Liberdade De Escolha”, Vogue Brasil June 2013, photographed by Mario Testino
These two images display a clear troubling of gender and pose a challenge to the gendered fashion-model body. Like much of the work in which Legler appears, the simple troubling of gender through the use of her body is evident. She presents as masculine, but the revealing of her sexed body creates a tension with her gender performance.
Visually, these images reference Robert Mapplethorpe’s groundbreaking photographs of bodybuilder Lisa Lyons in the 1980s, which explore the contradiction between Lyon’s muscular physique and the performance of femininity. For Mapplethorpe, “Lyon’s muscular body defied traditional conceptions of what a female body ‘should’ look like”
(Another 2015), and his photographs of her explore the “interplay between strength and vulnerability, disguise and identity, masculinity and femininity” (Another 2015). Similarly, Testino’s images, particularly
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of Legler, visually recall portraits of “gender-ambiguous bodies”
(Halberstam 1998, 35) by artist Del Grace, analysed by Halberstam
(1998) in their text Female masculinity. “We see gender in these photographs as a complex set of negotiations between bodies, identities, and desire,” Halberstam (35‒38) explains. Grace’s work is described as
“offering a glimpse into worlds where alternative masculinities make an art of gender” (Halberstam 1998, 38). It uses the exposure of ambiguous bodies not to reveal a ‘truth’ of sex, but to further reiterate alternative embodied masculinities. In this way, Testino’s image of Legler creates a contrast between her physical strength and her sexed body, while reiterating her female masculinity.
However, the images go beyond this denotative level of troubling to present Legler and Pejić together as embodying a broader shift. Here we see a united front of the genderqueer model, marking them as a vehicle not just for changing ideas in fashion, but for visibility in a broader social shift towards gender diversity and the acceptance of differences.
The images also highlight how bodies perform gender, not just clothing.
Despite the models have no garments concealing their bodies, each is still convincingly modelling a gender, regardless of whether it heteronormatively matches their sexed body.
In the same vein as Legler’s work in Vogue Brasil and, to an extent,
Cass Bird’s editorial, Legler often appears among a cast of GNC models to make a collective statement about gender. In the editorial “Girls like
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us”, published in Modern Weekly’s (China) Fall/Winter 2014 issue and photographed by Spanish photographer Txema Yeste, Legler appears alongside four masculine-presenting female models. Each features in a pair of portraits and challenges conventional notions of gender. The first in each set is a black-and-white, pared-back portrait where the model is in a plain white sleeveless undershirt and white cotton shorts. The second is a colour fashion image with the models in styled menswear.
Legler’s pair of contrasting images (see Figure 6.16) provide a singular reading. The black-and-white portrait is intimate and gentle, with close detail of Legler’s face in a thoughtful pose, her hand resting on her lips. The undershirt reveals her shoulders, clavicle and tattooed upper arms. This reads as a delicate, candid shot. The colour image shows a more active, posed gesture that reads as fashion. Legler’s hands are cinched around her waist, her elbows jut out and her upper body is pushed forward. This reads as a parody of a very clichéd fashion pose often performed by models in an attempt to highlight their thinness, although Legler’s version is a more awkward, self-conscious version. She is dressed in black suit pants, shiny black loafers with exposed white socks, a white, see-through mesh undertop and a colourful, floral collared shirt, left open to partially expose Legler’s torso. Both images could be read as featuring a male model; certainly, the styling and body language are consistent with such a reading.
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Figure 6.16: Legler in “Girls like us”, published in Modern Weekly (China) Fall/Winter 2014, photographed by Txema Yeste
The “Girls like us” editorial, including Legler’s images, signify a multi-layered queering of gender modelling. The editorial presents female models modelling menswear or, more specifically, acting as male models. They are styled as male models would be, with minimal makeup, short or masculine hair and silhouettes that lack obvious physical signifiers of femininity. They are performing the function of male models, embodying the slim male model version of masculinity (Barry
2014).
This is made more complex by the fact that these models are masculine-presenting women in their personal lives. For them, this is not necessarily acting. Further, fashion theory frames male models as inherently queer, as they strategically ‘drag up’ in the role of fashion model (Entwistle and Mears 2012, 321). The act of performing as a male
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model is to act out a queered function within an inverted gender hierarchy where women are privileged. It poses the question: if fashion models are a prescription of gender ideals (Craik 1994), what is being prescribed here, and to whom? This project contends that Legler’s performance prescribes an abandonment of conventional gender roles to audiences. Here, Legler’s work troubles gendered relationships: between the fashion model and gender, and between the sexed body and gender.
The use of Legler as a model in group shoots to make a collective statement speaks to her brand as a representation of contemporary beauty ideals. “The right face at the right time”, published in i-D online in 2014 and photographed by Daniel Jackson, is a clear example of
Legler’s trendiness in action (see Figure 6.27 for a selection of images and Appendix A for the full set). Legler appears alongside 27 other models of varying genders under the tagline “This is New York now” (i-D team 2014). The shoot features solo portraits of each model that attempt to capture an ‘essence’ of their style. This is deduced from the varying levels of actual fashion presented in the shoot. While models such as Legler, dressed all in Saint Laurent by Hedi Slimane, are modelling high fashion, others wear just one or two garments listed by brand, and some wear only their own clothing with no brand credits listed. That is, this shoot is not primarily about fashion as much as it is about presenting contemporary ideals of beauty.
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The overarching ideal of beauty shown here, paradoxically both diverse and narrow, is being offered up as a ‘snapshot’ of fresh New York style in 2014. The models featured in the editorial vary in ethnicity and gender, but there is little variation in body type and age, with the majority of models in their early twenties; Legler is an outlier at 36. i-D does not explicitly frame this collection as being about gender, but many of the images can be read as troubling gender. Styling and production choices in many present the body as a question. The look of many models wear is ambiguous, and the play between exposure and concealment of their bodies obscures any definable gendered characteristics. In this way, the reading of gender becomes illegible.
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Figure 6.17: Left to right: Irina K, Marcel Castenmiller, Casey Legler and Chiharu Okunugi, i-D online 2014, photographed by Daniel Jackson, stylist Alistair McKimm
Legler’s portrait brings her own gender trouble to this collection.
She is styled in her own aesthetic of ambiguity, incorporating both masculine and feminine garments into a look that is masculine-leaning.
This photoshoot collectively reflects a concept Legler routinely promotes about her own work: even though her performances trouble
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gender using her body and her identity, this work is not about gender, but difference. When gender is thoroughly troubled, the aesthetic language of gender is destabilised. Butler ([1990] 1999, 202-203) asserts that a “radical proliferation of gender” works to “displace the very norms that enable the repetition itself”. The work then moves beyond a discussion of gender, and the simplistic reduction of aesthetic to gender is superseded by a more nuanced discourse around diversity in the identities made visible by the fashion industry. Images such as these collectively propose a new aesthetic language in fashion that borrows from gendered aesthetics, but troubles them so thoroughly that gender itself is made incoherent, which in turn destablises the repetition and reproduction of gender.
Another aspect of Legler’s capacity to trouble gender comes from her commentary on fashion images of her body. Legler argues that she, a woman dressed in menswear, is really not challenging to gender. She explains that anyone can see she is completely comfortable in men’s clothing, primarily because her body fits these clothes. Legler (quoted in
Schafter 2015) explains of crews working on photoshoots:
Conceptually they get it. But it’s something else when you have, you know, a 6ft2in beast of a human walk in who actually is not performing. They were familiar with dressing up girls, but they weren’t expecting … me.
The nature of Legler’s gender trouble is to position the question of gender as irrelevant. As an academic, she convincingly articulates these
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ideas in interviews and written works that accompany images of her body. Through this process, Legler positions her troubling as not about gender, but about the broader categories of difference, and this added commentary is where a significant element of Legler’s mediation is made.
Legler as Cultural Intermediary
Legler’s work as a fashion model sets the condition of her visibility.
The work analysed in this chapter shows that her practice as a model positions her as a non-normative figure in fashion and visual culture with the capacity to challenge the traditional gendered function of fashion models. Her layered female‒masculine aesthetic renders the question of gender as a heteronormative binary out-of-date in much of her work.
The nature of Legler’s visibility is also determined by her role as spokesperson about her own work and body, as well as about her views on issues of gender and difference. She uses her voice to articulate the message she aims to communicate in her work, and how she sees her work achieving this. From the outset, she has exercised significant agency for herself as a fashion model, and has been explicit about her reasoning behind her choices. Legler has had articles in published news media forums and given multiple interviews that express her approach to modelling in no uncertain terms. In the context of this project, these written texts clearly frame her intended mediation and enables a clear analysis of Legler as a cultural intermediary.
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In the early days of her career after signing to Ford, Legler became a popular figure in fashion media, much like Pejić. Eva Wiseman (2013) explains in The Guardian, Legler “has the vocabulary to describe what she’s doing, why she’s doing it and what impact that might have on the world outside fashion”. Legler’s arts education and interest in gender discourse mean the content she gives interviewers is pointed and deliberate, and with this capacity, she works towards forming a clear message across her work.
In a written interview and accompanying photoshoot for New South
Wales’ women’s sexual health organisation Claude, published in 2014,
Legler provides extensive reflective commentary on her practice as fashion model. The interview focuses on her work as an artist, and how fashion is part of her practice. Legler explains that her work in fashion is highly collaborative, as traditionally, fashion models are one element of a large creative team, and often have very little agency in the image being produced. While she recognises that a lack of agency is inevitable because of the number of creative and commercial agendas converging within the production of fashion images, she sees her work in fashion as
“exploring the limits of agency within the really commercial space of fashion” (Legler quoted in “Casey Legler | Women, health, sex, art”
2014). She explains that she brings to each new work her identity and broader art practice, and that her approach is to work with photographers and creative directors to negotiate these in the process of modelling for them or, as she deems it, “the loaning of the object
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body” (Legler quoted in “Casey Legler | Women, health, sex, art” 2014).
Legler adds that this is how her art practice manifests in fashion, and she retains agency by vetting the projects and people with whom she works.
Legler (quoted in “Casey Legler | Women, health, sex, art” 2014) sets multiple boundaries around the people with whom she agrees to work, including the politics of the publication, the agendas of the people involved, the level of “intention, integrity and care” they bring to the project, the kind of garments she is asked to model and the intended readership of the work. Recently, Legler expanded on her own agency in a public reading of her upcoming book Godspeed for the New York Live
Arts series in 2017, noting that shortly after writing a Guardian article in
2013, she set up a framework in her practice as a model where every image of her that is produced must be accompanied by text: “that was the way in which I maintained agency over the representation of my body and the clarity around what I was doing” (Live Ideas: Casey Legler
Godspeed 2017).
Whilst high-profile models may well have some influence over who they work for, Legler’s approach to maintaining agency is unique in her insistence of a textual addition to images. This approach is clearly politically driven and complicates the inherent commerciality of her function as fashion model. It also points to her conscious and intentional mediation. Legler’s comments, although they do not explain this in such explicit terms, clearly reflect her capacity to mediate ideas as a visible
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figure in contemporary culture. With this knowledge, Legler’s agenda works to first, subvert the notion of agency in fashion images, and second, give a precise meaning to every image of her body—even though realistically, she cannot control the meaning made of her body.
The narrative Legler spins around her visibility is produced not only in her work, but collectively across her interviews. In an April 2013 television interview on CNN’s Starting point, Legler begins by giving her standard biographical narrative, working in her sport career and progressing to the story of her journey to fashion modelling. When asked about what she believes her work as a male model says about beauty and gender, she answers:
I think I'd like to submit here that I think what is more interesting maybe is what it says about how we celebrate difference. And this just happens to be one of the places where that’s happening, you know, that I get to kind of celebrate masculinity and femininity. I happen to be able to do both (Legler quoted in Baldwin and Berman 2013).
This comment gives insight into Legler’s strategy to driving the discourse around her work and her expert handling of pointed questions about beauty and gender. Here, Legler argues that she is just one element in the social shift towards celebrating difference, and that her work just happens to use her gender nonconformity as a vehicle for this shift in fashion.
Other interviews around this time confirm her position. In May
2013, Legler became the feature of the Vogue article “Gender agenda”
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by Sarah Mower, with her career provided as evidence of a broader social shift around gender. Mower (2013) argues, “New notions of masculinity and femininity are reshaping the fashion world—from interchanging collections to breakout models like Casey Legler”. Mower posits that in the fashion industry, “terms like androgyny and gender- bending don't capture what we're seeing anymore”, and suggests that
“fashion is now holding up its mirror to an obvious social reality: What you "should" look like now means only what suits you best”. Legler
(quoted in Mower 2013) defines her roles in this change, explaining that
“sheer luck of the biological roulette” she happens to be a woman “who has the great privilege to engage the ways in which gender signifiers can be liberated”. She continues that she views her artistic practice and by extension her work as a fashion model “as an example and a celebration,
(she) hope(s), of what it means and looks like to be exactly who you are”
(Legler quoted in Mower 2013). A year after signing to Ford Models,
Legler’s writing was published by The Guardian; her article, “I’m a woman who models men’s clothes. But this isn’t about gender” argues firmly that gender nonconformity in visual culture is first, not a new thing, and second, should not be reduced to questions of gender, but instead framed as a cultural acceptance of difference.
Legler consistently refers to the notion of difference in this essay and across her media presence, which references the debate of
“equality-versus-difference” (Scott 1988, 38) that emerged from US feminism in the 1980s and 1990s, and emanated from continental
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philosophy of the 1970s, such as the work of French feminists as Luce
Irigaray and Hélène Cixous. Difference feminism argues that the notion of ‘equality’ is misleading, as it is defined via the central dominant subject: man. Therefore, any equal rights gained are only equal to men, and do not account for the specific differences for these in othered bodies—for example, women’s reproductive rights. As Scott (1988, 44) explains, “Equality, in the political theory of rights that lies behind the claims of excluded groups for justice, means the ignoring of differences between individuals”. That is, equality in theory relies on the erasure of differences. Difference feminism argues that political movements should strive for difference, not equality. In the same way, Legler privileges the notion of acceptance of ‘difference’ over notions of gender equality.
Legler’s (2013) essay in The Guardian begins by criticising the commodification of gender diversity as a ‘trend’ for capital gains, closely reflecting Braidotti’s (2011) concept of the “commodification of differences”. Legler then goes on to argue that in fact, in terms of gender diversity, the “contemporary cultural landscape supports a larger interpretation than the one we currently have, of female‒masculinity and masculine-femininity”, citing examples of GNC individuals across cultural fields, including Gertrude Stein, Tilda Swinton, Jenny Shimizu,
Jack Halberstam and Judith Butler. The women she lists have in common excellence in their respective fields and nonconformity to heteronormative ideals of gender. This idea of excellence and visibility is a point she picks up on later, and one that runs throughout her language
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around gender, although she often phrases it as ‘being fierce’. Legler reminds the reader that these examples demonstrate the historical precedence of excellence not being tied to gender nonconformity, and argues that to believe otherwise is a “myopic view which is influenced by capitalist gain and profit”.
Despite this, Legler (2013) argues, mainstream culture has
“difficulty in celebrating difference”. Any celebration of differences is often diluted into more normative, palatable ideals or, conversely, sensationalised and turned into a profitable ‘point of difference’.
Legler’s work echoes Braidotti’s (2011, 27) notion of the
“commodification of differences” which turns “‘others’ into objects of consumption”’. Legler argues that the inaccurate representation of differences in a capitalist context poses a risk to young people who experience a lived reality of persecution for these same differences. She reflects on why she is pushing the narrative away from gender and towards celebrating difference:
This is about making space, making room and making things better. To limit this conversation to the (albeit salacious) red herring of gender is dangerous, careless and nothing short of ignorant—it takes for granted the intelligence and wellbeing of our communities (offering only an uneducated, uninteresting and sensationalist conversation to boot). It shames those who are gender-conformative and perpetuates a construct of homogeneity and belonging that is nothing short of destructive for our youth. It offers a false sense of privilege and ignorance to those who “fit” the norm (or trend) while potentially
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destroying those who don’t and ignoring those who are able to survive outside of it (Legler 2013).
Here, Legler is clearly marking the intent of her mediation. Through her visibility and the cultural dissemination of her ‘excellence’, read here as her bodily performance of authentic, nonconformist identity, Legler aims to reframe the conversation around gender nonconformity to the mainstreaming of difference in meaningful way. Legler is essentially arguing against the function of neo-capitalism that commodifies differences for profit, agreeing with Braidotti (2011), and asserting that a shifting of discourse from specific identity markers to a more general discourse of difference would lessen the commercialisation or trivialisation of these differences. This article marks Legler’s first significant claim on what her validation by the fashion industry might actually mean. It also signifies a very clear and intentional mediation: that her success as a male fashion model is not about gender and historically not new, but is about the cultural acceptance of diverse identities.
From 2013 onwards, Legler has continued giving interviews to a variety of fashion media and news outlets that she has vetted as aligning with her aims and goals. These all work to further articulate her views on the discussion around gender in contemporary mainstream culture and define her mediation. As a part of the 2015 “Be you” campaign for activewear label THE UPSIDE, Legler appeared in an accompanying video interview where she reflects on the central notions of being yourself and
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diverse versions of femininity. Specifically, she articulates her own mythology as a queer woman growing up among “the first generation in the shadow of the AIDS epidemic” (Legler quoted in 10 Magazine
Australia 2015). She explains that during this period, there was a lack of visual representation on which to base her own identity. Legler explains there was an abundance of visual imagery around LGBTQ activism and protest, and plenty of theoretical language for her experience of gender, but a lack of visual language for her specific embodied gender identity.
Instead, she recalls that this period was often dominated by discourses around “hyper-femininity as a chosen gender, not something that was just passively received from within a patriarchal construct” (Legler quoted in 10 Magazine Australia 2015). She explains how her experience as an LGBTQ+ youth in the period prior to the institutionalisation of
LGBTQ+ rights forced her to forge her own identity, because there were
“no rules”; she discusses how the process of figuring out how her
“insides and (her) outsides matched up” was a difficult one in the face of lacking representations of queer women (Legler quoted in 10 Magazine
Australia 2015). This interview, which appeared alongside the “Be you” campaign images analysed earlier in this chapter, gives weight to
Legler’s position as a cultural intermediary in the area of gender and
LGBTQ+ discourse. Discussing her own mythology communicates her specialist knowledge in identity formation and LGBTQ+ history, and awards her the level of expertise needed to be perceived as a cultural intermediary in this arena.
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A final point Legler makes that connects ideas of the model, agency and gender is her unique experience of being a female menswear model in the fashion-modelling industry. Entwistle and Mears (2012, 324-325) tell us that the industry is an inverted gender hierarchy where the practice of male modelling requires a queering of heteronormative masculinity in its function. Within this context, Legler, a male model who is a woman, believes she experiences an unusual intersection of privileges. She explains that there are:
some instances where I experienced male privilege in relationship to other men in terms of being objectified or not. I’m not even sure if that’s a possibility, if a biologically born woman can experience male privilege in an exclusive male setting (Legler quoted in “Casey Legler | Women, health, sex, art” 2014).
The way she has experienced this privileged position is in the casting stages of the modelling process, where models are sent to see clients, and are often asked to disrobe for companies to make an assessment of whether they will cast them. Legler has often experienced being pardoned in this disrobement process alongside other male models. She says that in this space and process of being looked at, “somehow by being read as a man, I wasn’t expected to take my clothes off. I‘m curious about that” (Legler quoted in “Casey Legler | Women, health, sex, art” 2014). She continues:
what was being displayed in front of me was a visual language of disrobement in order to be looked at. For me that is so ingrained in consciousness that when they did it I experienced it as female
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objectification even though all of the participants were men, and somehow I was exempt because I was being read as a man (Legler quoted in “Casey Legler | Women, health, sex, art” 2014).
This is a clear reflection of how Legler tests the limits of agency within the function of the fashion model, and is highly aware of her unique gendered function. This being pardoned from disrobing while being read as a male model reflects a sensitivity on behalf of the casting agents, who, despite a model’s body being their prime vehicle for work, give
Legler a greater level of respect by not enforcing the same expectations on her. In this way, Legler not only navigates the expectations of male models, who generally have little agency, but also navigates the position of being a woman in an inverted gender hierarchy where women still trade on a currency of being looked at, and navigates the traditional expectations placed on female models.
Legler’s mediation of her diverse gender identity can be read in two ways: first, through the images that depict her, and what they communicate about gender; and second, through her intentional framing of the discourse around her body, and how this challenges traditional notions of the fashion model’s agency, via her presence in the media and her own written work. Collectively, these outputs convey a clear ideological message underpinning Legler’s practice and comprising several specific ideas.
First, through her work as a fashion model, Legler mediates gender nonconformity as an ideal of beauty. While fashion models have been
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read in fashion studies as the professionalisation of heteronormative gender ideals, Legler has achieved commercial success with a GNC aesthetic, hence disrupting the connection between normative gender and the validation of normative beauty in a commercial context. The very nature of being employed as a fashion model is evidence that
Legler’s look, and by extension her identity, is validated in the commercial context of fashion.
Legler also pushes the question of fashion model aesthetics and beauty ideals beyond discussions of gender. In many of her images, the revealment and concealment of her body actually work to further obfuscate gender, making the reading of gender as binary system a pointless endeavour. In addition to this aesthetic labour, Legler explicitly raises the question, “Why are we focused on gender anyway?” through her media presence. This active challenge attempts to shift the focus away from gender and towards a language of difference.
Specifically, in her practice as a fashion model, Legler challenges the role of the male model as passive in an inverted hierarchy, and enacts a subversive kind of privilege that highlights the queered system of fashion. This anecdotal experience and critical accompanying comments work to reiterate Mears and Entwistle’s work on the inverted gender hierarchy of modelling systems, and also exposes the system’s reliance on stable, heteronormative identities.
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Further to this, Legler’s insistence on agency in vetting her projects and accompanying the images of her body with text form the most important aspect of her mediation. Through this scaffolding, she repeatedly and consistently promotes the idea that her success as a model is not all about gender. Her success as a cultural intermediary instead signals that a social shift has indeed occurred in terms of beauty ideals, but that it comes from a long history of gender nonconformity, and is not all that controversial. Rather, Legler repeatedly insists that her success needs to be an example of how differences are discussed and celebrated in visual culture. She contextualises her work as one example of multiple visible figures in contemporary culture who are bringing differences into the central discourse of success and influence.
Further to this very specific message, Legler’s insistence on agency subverts the position of the passive fashion model who traditionally lacks this level of influence over the images to which her body is loaned.
Legler brands herself as activist who uses fashion as a part of her broader message and ministry. She explicitly frames fashion modelling as a political, embodied practice of performance, and therefore offers an alternative function of the fashion model in contemporary culture beyond readings previously made in fashion literature. She consciously enacts the role of cultural intermediary, and reframes the nature of the fashion model’s mediation from one of lifestyle and culture to one of political mediation about identity and difference.
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Conclusion
As a case study, Legler offers conceptually rich content for analysis of the genderqueer fashion model. Her work goes beyond the simple troubling of gender to force a rethink around the discourse of gender and difference altogether. Her work and her words leave the reader asking, “What can be achieved by reading this through gender anyway?”
Her approach to gender and political voice are disrupting to a traditional view of the function of fashion models. In a cultural context where fashion models are generally regarded as vacuous and apolitical, it is significant that Legler takes up a political discourse via fashion modelling through a visual and embodied political practice. Her intended mediation must be measured against her actual mediation: does Legler mediate the ideas about gender that she intends? The analysis performed here suggests that while her images can be read as troubling gender in subtle and nuanced ways, it is Legler’s accompanying commentary that shapes the perception of her images. Even in the context of media reporting on
Legler with gender as the focus, Legler’s articulate responses return the focus to the core message around difference. In this way, Legler’s message is very pointed, and she communicates it via every platform of her work, which clearly frames her message about her identity as culturally valuable. While Pejić’s career has followed her path to claiming her identity and her progressive use of her voice to champion transgender rights, Legler conversely started modelling with her identity already formed and a clear agenda. These are two starkly different
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approaches, and both are expanded upon in the remaining two case studies: Hari Nef and Richie Shazam Khan.
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Chapter 7: Hari Nef
The third case study of this project is American model Hari Nef. Nef has a relatively short career compared with Pejić and Legler, and thus this chapter features a briefer analysis than the two previous ones.
While Nef has only been modelling professionally since 2015, she has attained high levels of success and visibility in this short period. Like
Pejić, much of Nef’s work reaches mainstream audiences, and like Legler,
Nef also collaboratively produces some of her modelling work and other creative outputs. Significantly, Nef is a passionate and educated advocate for transgender rights, a role she adopts throughout her modelling work and media presence. For this reason, Nef offers a singular case study of a genderqueer fashion model with mainstream visibility, heightened agency and a latent activist agenda.
Nef is a US-born fashion model, actor and writer, and a transgender woman. Born into a Jewish family in 1992 in Philadelphia, she moved to
New York to study theatre at Columbia University in 2011. Nef began her transition and hormone replacement therapy in 2014 (Brand 2014) right before being signed to IMG models in 2015; subsequently, she was “the first openly trans woman to sign an international modelling contract”
(“Hari Nef | IMG Models”, n.d.). IMG is one of the largest international modelling agencies, and as the first transgender model signed to their board, the news of Nef’s contract was covered broadly in fashion media
(Ferrier 2015). Nef also starred in the second and third seasons of HBO’s
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Transparent, and has had a short essay on the transgender experience published in Lena Dunham’s Lenny. In her relatively brief time as a fashion model, Nef has gained significant commercial success, being one of the reappearing faces of luxury brand Gucci under the creative direction of Alessandro Michele. Nef has become a millennial icon of gender diversity in contemporary fashion, and her image is synonymous with nowness.
Nef’s portfolio of work serves as a visual history of the changes in her bodily aesthetic, which is continually evolving as she progresses in her transition. This constant change sits in contrast to the other case studies in this project—even if a fashion model’s look needs to be transformative and respond to different working conditions, each model in the other case studies has an element of identifiable stability to their look. Nef’s aesthetic has gradually changed as her transition progresses—but her attitude, the message she communicates and her demand among socially progressive clients has remained consistent.
Nef has challenged the representation of gendered bodies in her work by allowing her transitioning body to be seen and to feature candidly in her work. The representation of her changing body has troubled heteronormative gender in several ways. First, her ambiguity, especially in the earlier stages of her modelling career, renders gender confusing and illegible. Second, like Legler, she consistently works among a cast of GNC models to collectively challenge gender in fashion.
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In addition, much of Nef’s work displays a performance of normative femininity. While generally such work would not trouble heteronormative gender ideals, in some cases, Nef’s increased levels of agency in the creative direction and publication of the fashion images in which she appears reframes their intent as authentically representing a transgender narrative. This in itself troubles gender, as it reframes the transgender model, and hence transgender identities, as uneventful and everyday. It is these varying modes of troubling gender aesthetically that make Nef’s portfolio a rich site for analysis, while her interviews, public talks and written work give an insight to her personhood.
Similarly to Casey Legler, Nef has been a vocal and active voice around trans politics throughout her career. In addition to her fashion- modelling portfolio, Nef demonstrates an extensive use of networks and exercise of agency throughout her media presence. She comments extensively on her work and on trans issues and, similar to Pejić, is called upon as a spokesperson for her community. As a case study, Nef is a sound example, like Legler and Pejić, of conscious and explicit mediation that relies on networks, influence and agency.
Troubling Gender
Throughout her professional portfolio, Nef troubles gender through an ever-changing aesthetic, playing with and subverting gender aesthetically and reframing the content of some imagery into more nuanced transgender narratives. In these works, Nef uses her
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everydayness to trouble heteronormative gender and expand representations of queer gender.
Troubling gender through fluid aesthetics Nef’s aesthetic has changed dramatically throughout her career via a number of “spirited beauty risks” (Van Paris 2017) in what she calls a propensity for “creating, re-creating, meta-creating” herself (Nef quoted in Bernard 2014). In The Guardian, Sarah Hughes (2016) describes Nef as a “striking, singular beauty” whose aesthetic “combines the stylish androgyny of a 60s French starlet with the heavy-lidded gaze of a silent- era movie star”. Indeed, underpinning her changing aesthetics are her strong facial features, porcelain skin and prominent and deep-set eyes, which are immediately recognisable. However, around this baseline of immutable physical features, Nef has transformed her aesthetic significantly during the first three years of her career (see figures 7.1‒
7.6).
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Figure 7.1: Nef walking in Hood By Air SS15 runway, NYFW Spring 2015
Figure 7.2: Nef walking in Eckhaus Latta S/S15 runway
Figure 7.3: Nef in the Gucci Men’s wear AW 2016 Ready-to-wear runway
Figure 7.4: Nef in H&M Studio AW 2016 Ready-to-wear runway
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Figure 7.5: Dakota Johnson, Hari Nef and Petra Collins in Gucci Bloom campaign image, August 2017, photographed by Glen Luchford
Figure 7.6: Hari Nef in The Travel Almanac Autumn/Winter 2017, photographed by Julia Hetta
In 2015, Nef’s look was highly androgynous, signifying the start of her transition and, therefore, ambiguity. For her first appearances in the high-fashion world, Nef’s bleached eyebrows, short-ish, pageboy-style
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cut, slim physique and ambiguous styling renders her gender highly ambiguous. By 2016, her look had moved more towards normative femininity, but was often styled more androgynously. With dark eyebrows and more traditionally feminine styled hair and makeup, at this point, she blends in with her cohort of womenswear models, being read as normatively feminine. By 2017, Nef’s aesthetic has inched towards hyperfemininity and embodies more traditional feminine ideals, including long blonde hair in the latter half of 2017 and overtly feminine styling—much like the trajectory of Pejić’s aesthetic. In particular, Nef’s ongoing association with Gucci’s fragrance campaigns, in which floral motifs are heavily featured (see Figure 7.5), have framed a highly feminine visibility. Nef is known for aesthetic risk-taking, which is not a predictor for the trajectory of her aesthetic, but does offer a critical relationship between her increasingly normative aesthetic and her rise into mainstream visibility.
Using the body + collective troubling Like Casey Legler, Hari Nef troubles gender in certain works through revealing her body and working in casts of other GNC models. In the editorial “Chanel” in Exit Magazine (figures 7.7 and 7.8), Nef is cast among a group of other gender-ambiguous models (see Appendix B for full set of images). The group mixes and confuses symbols of heteronormative gender: boys with long luscious hair and beestung lips, girls with short spiky hair and bare faces, all unified by an extremely youthful and slender-framed androgyny. Nef herself embodies many of
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these contradictions in her aesthetic: she is slim with the slight hint of breasts, which are only detectable when exposed, and her face and hair are styled ambiguously.
Figure 7.7: “Chanel” editorial in Exit Magazine Fall/Winter 2015, photographed by Santiago and Mauricio Sierra, fashion editor and stylist Michaela Dosamantes
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Figures 7.8: “Chanel” editorial in Exit Magazine Fall/Winter 2015, photographed by Santiago and Mauricio Sierra, fashion editor and stylist Michaela Dosamantes
The image of Nef in Figure 7.8 particularly embodies these tensions as she reveals her ambiguous body, further defying and confusing questions of her gender. These images, much like the work of Legler, collectively render gender almost unreadable. The occasional revealing of a breast throughout the shoot does not work to clarify gender. In this way, this editorial is really exploring a post-gender version of beauty, much like
Pejić’s more abstract work.
Normative femininity as troubling In much of her work from 2015 to 2017, Hari Nef presents as a normative womenswear model. While many brands cast her because of her influence and visibility as a prominent transgender figure, the work itself reads normatively, regardless of the designer’s intention. These
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performances include work in a group of models as well as solo castings, and can be seen across her runway, commercial and editorial work.
Figure 7.9: Hari Nef in Adam Selman AW15 Ready-to-wear runway
While Nef’s runway portfolio is her least populated, she has walked in several runway shows where she performs as a normative female model, including Adam Selman Autumn/Winter16 (see Figure 7.9). In the context of a womenswear show like this one, Nef’s aesthetic is consistent with the rest of the cast of cisgender female models. Any perceived androgyny is a result of styling and is consistent across the entire cast. In such a context, Nef’s aesthetic does not trouble gender.
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Figure 7.10: Hari Nef in Mansur Gavriel 2016 campaign, photographed by Tanya and Zhenya Posternak
In June 2016, the New York-based cult accessories label Mansur
Gavriel released an advertising campaign featuring Nef as the face. This was a departure for the label, which is “known for its minimalist design and fondness for under-the-radar models” (Gonzales 2016). Mansur
Gavriel is said to have cast Nef for her beauty and energy (Gonzales
2016). In the campaign images (Figure 7.10), Nef’s bold features contrast sharply with her colour-blocked wardrobe against a vivid blue sky. She is
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depicted in relatively natural poses, the wind wrapping her hair around her face, and sunlight brightly illuminating her features and the leather goods. The images are classic examples of commercial fashion photography: “a portrait of someone wearing a dress”, as David Bailey famously said (V&A Museum 2014). Nef is the woman being looked at; the dress or fashion is the bags and the garments in which she is clothed. The images lack any real narrative or context, and instead are technically well-executed to highlight the product being sold. Nef’s features are styled and rendered as typically normative on the spectrum of fashion-model aesthetics, and because of this, no real troubling of gender can be read beyond Nef’s personal transgender narrative, which is not drawn upon aesthetically.
Especially in her more recent output, Nef’s editorial work often features performances of normative femininity. Editorials in InStyle US,
Elle UK, Interview Magazine and Teen Vogue all indicate this normative capacity. However, in Nef’s case, even normative performances can trouble systems of heteronormative gender, depending on the context of publication and the level of agency Nef has in the process. Nef was guest editor for the January 2017 issue of Candy by Luis Venegas, a fashion and style publication “completely dedicated to celebrate transgender and gnc/nonbinary people, transvestism, cross-dressing, drag and androgyny in all their glory” (CANDY n.d.). In this issue, Nef appears in several editorials and collections of images. In “Honeymoon”, an editorial styled by Sofia Achaval and photographed by Sebastian Faena, Nef is cast
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opposite male model Andres Velencoso. The collection of images depicts a romantic and intimate narrative of two lovers on a holiday vacation
(see figures 7.11 and 7.12).
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Figure 7.11: Excerpts from Hari Nef and Andres Velencoso in “Honeymoon”, CANDY Magazine January 2017, photographed by Sebastian Faena, fashion editor and stylist Sofia Achaval
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Figure 7.12: Excerpts from Hari Nef and Andres Velencoso in “Honeymoon”, CANDY Magazine January 2017, photographed by Sebastian Faena, fashion editor and stylist Sofia Achaval
In these images, we see an ostensibly heterosexual couple framed dramatically in predominantly black-and-white photographs. The images are highly cinematic, and Nef’s “60s French starlet with the heavy-lidded gaze of a silent-era movie star” (Hughes 2016) look lending itself to the genre. The male model sharply contrasts with Nef through his typically masculine features, including body and facial hair and his physical size, exaggerating Nef’s porcelain skin and petite, soft features. Taken at face value, this editorial draws on commonly used aesthetics and techniques to portray a heteronormative romance (see Appendix C for full set of images). It clearly emphasises the traditionally masculine and feminine
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qualities of Nef and Velencoso through their contrasting styling and body language.
It is significant that Nef was the guest editor of this publication, and thus the piece depicts a transgender narrative as narrated by the trans subject themselves. The narrative does not focus on Nef’s transness, and instead presents a love story that viewers are quite used to seeing. This is troubling to heteronormative representations of gender, such as Andreja Pejić’s appearance in GQ Portugal, by placing a nontraditional identity at the centre of normative desire without fetishising or trivialising it. In turn, these images work to normalise the visibility of transgender romance as familiar.
Nef as Cultural Intermediary
Throughout her career, Nef has been consistently active and vocal in her own mediation of trans identities as valuable. Her rise to success as a model is paralleled by her role in the television show Transparent, and also clearly coincides with a shift in the fashion, film and television industry towards transgender visibility. Nef often speaks to the ways in which her visibility reflects a contemporary cultural ‘moment’, and uses her influence to hold the industry accountable and offer insights into transgender rights issues. She does this through literally discussing these issues via media interviews, her own writings and as an elected LGBTQ+ spokesperson in the fashion community.
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This mediation began even before Nef’s official signing to IMG. In
February 2015, Bullet Magazine published an interview with Nef conducted during New York Fashion Week on her experiences as a new face in the industry. Describing Nef as a performance artist, journalist
Justin Moran (2015) argues that at the time of publication, Nef was an
“it” girl “spearheading the swelling transgender movement so that one day it won’t be called a ‘movement,’ as if it’s some fleeting trend”. The article goes on to quote Nef extensively, and she expresses her scepticism regarding the fashion industry’s piqued interest in transgender models. Nef (quoted in Moran 2015) argues that the industry’s interest in trans models is more about “aesthetics” as opposed to an “ontology” of genuinely tackling trans issue. It is worth quoting Nef at length here, as she explains her attitude towards transgender models in fashion right before she was signed by IMG:
Fashion loves to be first, fashion hates to repeat itself and fashion has seasonal expiration dates. The rise of trans visibility has spread ideas and aesthetics that are quite new for most of the world. Trans folks are in the process of seizing justice and visibility—it is an urgent matter of life or death. In fashion, this kind of urgency translates to ‘what’s now.’ I think trans visibility is generally a positive thing and fashion could prove to be a fabulous platform for us. I’m uncertain as to whether ‘what’s now’ will become integrated into the norms, or merely be written off as ‘last season.’ Ultimately, I want to see trans folks taking their place in the fashion world in a way that doesn’t feel like such a big deal (Nef quoted in Moran 2015).
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This notion of trans visibility as not “such a big deal” speaks to
Nef’s attitude towards normalising trans visibility, as her work in CANDY
Magazine later would later attempt to achieve. It also shows her awareness of the potential problematic nature of transgender visibility in fashion becoming tokenistic and a ‘trend’, as the fashion industry is built upon valuing newness and quickly disposing of obsolete trends.
Moran’s piece in Bullett Magazine and other early media coverage—including a profile piece published on i-D Vice in December
2014 (Brand 2014)—signal that Hari Nef existed in fashion networks and had cultural capital prior to being a fashion model. As indicated by the content of these articles, she also had a political agenda in terms of challenging the conditions of trans visibility in the fashion industry and educating the public on trans issues. This suggests she was already primed to be a cultural intermediary, and her ascension into the fashion industry gave her the platform and confirmation of expertise that results from being validated as fashionable and beautiful, via which she could communicate her agenda in a more pointed way.
Shortly after this interview, in June 2015, Nef was signed by IMG
Worldwide. A number of fashion media outlets reported on the news of the first transgender model signed to a global modelling contract, with
Vogue online running a profile on Nef. In the article by Katherine
Bernard (2015), Nef explains her openness about her gender identity as a conscious decision to mediate ideas about transgender identities; she
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hopes that “by being open in her work, she can help others understand that there are as many ways to be trans as there are trans people”. She goes on to explain how beginning her modelling career very early in her transition was a conscious choice, arguing that she could have undergone voice training and gender reassignment surgery before beginning her film and fashion career, but “wanted to be in the world …
It’s more than a job to me … It is political” (Nef quoted in Bernard 2015).
The article continues with Nef discussing her approach to displaying an androgynous femininity as a trans woman. She argues that often, cisgender people expect transgender women to hyper-feminise themselves in order to be accepted by society. Nef (quoted in Bernard
2015) chooses “a more gender ambiguous or barefaced or subtle femininity”, as she feels this authentically represents herself, but concedes that any woman using techniques of hyperfemininity is entitled to that choice. In conclusion, Bernard posits that “the right to self- define, to choose your own narration, and then to change your mind is what Nef hopes her life will inspire”. This sentiment mirrors the key tenets of the transfeminism movement, which are the belief in the individual’s right to determine their gender identity, the right to express that identity without fear of violence or discrimination and the right to bodily autonomy from medical, political and religious institutions
(Koyama 2003, 245). Nef’s reiteration of these sentiments in interviews subtly communicates transfeminist agendas—thus, she is politicising her voice and visibility. As Nef (quoted in Bernard 2015) argues, reflecting
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on her role as a highly visible trans model: “’It’s not enough to be cute in a magazine’, she says. ‘You have to talk’”.
The Vogue online article by Bernard (2015) clearly reveals the nature of Nef’s mediation. She feels passionately about acting as an example of trans visibility in a way that challenges normative thinking around trans identity. She is consciously aware of how her transition being made so public has the potential to inform and educate the public on the multifaceted nature of transgender identities. Finally, her words acknowledge her role and responsibility as a high-profile figure in contemporary culture to use her voice and visibility in a political manner, which for her means challenging social perception of transness and acting as a voice within contemporary gender and identity politics.
In September 2016, The New Yorker published another major profile of Nef: “Hari Nef, model citizen” by Michael Schulman is a candid account of Nef’s experiences up until that point. The interview recounts
Nef’s personal narrative from an early age, tracing her suburban teen years of finding herself, and recounting how literature from gender discourse comforted her during testing times. Nef discusses her life in the New York creative scene prior to transitioning, where she explored her gender and briefly identified as nonbinary. During this time, she studied at Colombia University as a drama major, and began to audition for only female roles. In 2014, she began openly identifying as a transgender woman. In the same year, Shayne Oliver of Hood Air asked
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her to walk in a show, and in fall she made her runway debut for the brand. The remainder of the article details the encounters of Nef’s high- fashion career and her experiences navigating them as a transgender woman.
Schulman (2016) frames Nef’s career within the broader cultural shift towards trans visibility across fashion, film and television, identifying that she is a part of a cohort of contemporary transgender stars. Throughout the piece, Schulman conveys Nef’s precarious task of balancing being in the upper echelons of high fashion with the perceived duty of being a transgender spokesperson. Schulman explains:
Nef’s burgeoning career has imposed contradictory demands on her: she is supposed to embody a rarefied brand of stylish cool, but, because she is a de-facto mouthpiece, she calls out her industry for valuing “trans aesthetics” over trans lives.
Nef explains how she is constantly aware of feeling a sense of otherness as a trans woman in fashion, and how she constantly navigates criticism from her own community for not doing enough to represent transgender experience. Schulman makes it clear how this pressure and the political climate in the US weigh on her heavily, and his assessment of Nef’s conflicted experience is worth quoting at length:
Like most avatars of progress, Nef must navigate tricky terrain. While she leads a life of enviable glamour, any public display of success comes with asterisks. Has she made inroads into the mainstream? Sure, she’ll say, but she’ll credit her brave predecessors. And she quickly acknowledges that she is privileged: she is college-educated, well off, and white; she
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knows that trans women of color face much higher rates of violence and discrimination. She is critical of the fashion industry, which she calls “conservative,” but wary of saying anything that will cost her a job. She finds it exhausting to talk about her identity all the time. But, given her platform and her perks, she knows that she shouldn’t be complaining.
Through detailing Nef’s struggle in an intimate way, Nef’s approach to cultural mediation comes across as conscious and considered. She is
“sceptical of what she sees as cultural tokenism” (Schulman 2016) in the fashion industry, and “arrives at interviews armed with memorized statistics” (Schulman 2016) on transgender issues to act as an advocate of her community. Through this critical approach and readiness to educate, Nef actively mediates that transgender identities are more than aesthetics, and that her success as a fashion model does not negate the struggles her community still faces. She frames her identity as culturally valuable through the lens of her personal narrative, hence articulating some of the broader social issues surrounding transgender visibility. In this way, Nef consciously embraces the role of cultural intermediary with an awareness of her power to specifically validate and reframe trans identities via her presentation of self in the media.
Although Nef has been described paradoxically as both an
“accidental activist” and a “trans pioneer” by Teen Vogue (McCall 2016), she has undoubtedly taken on the position of spokesperson for issues of gender diversity in the fashion community. As McCall (2016) explains,
Nef goes to a great effort to take on community feedback by insisting on
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the inclusion of trans history and statistics in her interviews. Outside her written interviews, Nef has also brought this advocacy to industry- specific forums about diversity, including a panel discussion with
Business of Fashion (BoF) editor Tim Blanks, woman of colour and model
Joan Smalls and modelling agent Ivan Bart entitled “Diversity and inclusivity: Fashion’s missed opportunity” (December 2016). Blanks calls on his panel to reflect on and discuss how they have experienced discrimination in the fashion industry, and Nef uses the opportunity to offer a critically insightful dissection of the fashion-modelling industry’s approach to diversity. She argues that in the industry, there has been a
“subdivision of fashion bookings that has emerged which almost fetishizes diversity—pursues diversity as an end” (Nef quoted in BoF
2016). She argues that models are increasingly sought in specific identity categories such as race or gender, but these almost always for castings that fulfil a diversity quota for a particular brand.
Nef contends that this kind of diversified casting rarely results in high-profile, mainstream contracts in the fashion industry (BoF 2016).
While she concedes that as a transgender model, these diversity drives offer her employment, she argues that this approach to diversity “never really bridges the gap between the hyper-rarefied space of a top booking and just throwing this nominal diversity in so the brand can say that they did it” (Nef quoted in BoF 2016). Further to this, Nef asserts that a genuine approach to diversity and inclusion in the fashion industry would require structural overhaul, as true inclusion is not constituted by
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including diverse identities in a system designed around only one identity. For Nef, the way to achieve this is via action from the industry’s gatekeepers: she identifies casting directors and agents as main players, and contends that fashion media and producers of fashion imagery must call on these players for most inclusive casting.
Nef’s role as spokesperson reached considerable heights when she presented a TEDx Talk entitled #FreeTheFemme: The aesthetics of survival in May 2016. In her talk, Nef addresses the way in which high- profile women, both transgender and cisgender, are criticised in the media for playing directly into stereotypes of feminine aesthetics. She refers directly to the examples of transgender celebrity Caitlyn Jenner and highly feminine musician Lana Del Ray, arguing that second-wave feminists consider adopting techniques of “manmade femininity” (Nef quoted in TEDx Talks 2016) inherently antifeminist, while conversely, transgender women are murdered at staggering rates—at least one every three days globally—for not being feminine enough. Nef asks if, by adopting traditional feminine aesthetics—techniques that enable them to be “strong and safe”—transgender women are “sell-outs or survivors”
(Nef quoted in TEDx Talks 2016). The talk passionately defends women’s right to adopt feminine aesthetics, and argues that this is not inherently antifeminist. Throughout the talk, Nef grapples with feminist theory, critical literature and statistics of violence in a deft and expert manner, and with charismatic delivery. This public event cements her place as an activist, as it deals entirely with her political agenda and has no
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connection to work as a fashion model beyond her celebrity in that role.
In this way, it can be argued that Nef uses her visibility and position as a culturally validated, fashionable figure to educate and influence perceptions around the value of certain aesthetics and identities. The role of a cultural intermediary is to articulate via their practice “notions of what, and thereby who, is legitimate, desirable and worthy” (Smith
Maguire and Matthews 2014, 19), and the nature of Nef’s specific mediation pushes for the humanisation and defetishising of transgender identities, and raising awareness of the issues facing her community.
Further to this, Nef as a cultural intermediary has potential to effect the
“reproducing of the cultural foundations of the consumer marketplace” and “the potential to contribute to new and perhaps even radical definitions of products, consumers and consumption” (Smith Maguire and Matthews 2014, 19). In the case of Nef’s talk, Nef is using her role as cultural intermediary to specifically mediate ideas about not only trans identities, but also the consumption and discourse of femininity. This demonstrates her capacity to “impact on the production and reproduction of discourses, shaping perceptions of the social world on an interpersonal and/or much wider scale” (Smith Maguire and
Matthews 2014, 19).
Cultural mediation through creative works and collaborations Beyond Nef’s mediation through public talks, published interviews and panel discussions, she also mediates her message about the
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transgender community through her broader creative practice and, even more implicitly, through her professional associations.
In line with the sentiment conveyed in Schulman’s piece, Nef penned her own “searingly honest” (Sisley 2016) essay on trans visibility published in early 2016 in Lena Dunham’s feminist newsletter Lenny. The essay, “Hypervisibility”, is a collection of self-narrated memories, conversations and experiences that took place before and throughout
Nef’s modelling career. She recounts beginning in the modelling industry, candidly reflecting on how, at some point, she became willing to be defined in the industry by her gender identity: “I couldn't remember when I'd stopped willing to be trans and started wanting to be trans” (Nef 2016). She reflects on her critics, especially trans women of colour who have called her out on social media for ignoring intersectional concerns in her representation and discourse of transgender identity. The essay concludes with a reflection on the social shift or ‘moment’ occurring for trans visibility, with Nef (2016) claiming that she “didn’t preexist this moment” but is a “product of it”. With this,
Nef suggests that her success as a fashion model may be a result of the social shift in attitudes towards gender, whereas others (such as the reporter quotations in her essay) suggest she has helped produce this shift. Nef’s suggestions that her success as a model is a result of the social shift in attitudes towards gender sits in conflict with previous statements made by Nef that she aims to use her visibility to educate and shed light on trans issues, which in a sense implies that she is active
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in effecting change. Therefore, Nef articulates the crux of the question around transgender and genderqueer models: are they the result of broader social shifts? Or are they active producers of the shift? Nef’s mediation sits in between, and indicates that a social shift is an incremental and cyclical process, not a linear and straightforward, causal one. To borrow from Roberts (1993, 665) on the political power of changes in fashion, the aesthetics and practice of genderqueer fashion models serve as “a maker as well as a marker” in “a larger struggle for social and political power” for the trans community.
As well as writing essays, Nef collaborated with Luis Venegas as the guest editor of CANDY Magazine for the January 2017 issue. As previously discussed, while Nef’s modelling work can be read as troubling heteronormative views of transgender sexuality, her role as guest editor for the issue allowed her space to provide commentary on her intentions for it. In an article published on BoF, writer Tim Blanks
(2016) discusses the collaboration between Nef and the magazine’s publisher Luis Venegas, who calls their collaborative edit a “love letter to trans beauty”. In the article, Blanks describes what Nef hopes to achieve in her collaboration with Venegas, and some of the predicaments she faces as a model and activist.
The CANDY guest editor role reflects Nef’s position as spokesperson for the trans community, though Nef (quoted in Blanks 2016) expresses that she finds it difficult to balance such a role while upholding the
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image of being a fashion model: “I’m walking a tightrope between playing by the rules and changing the rules, being a cool blank-slate actress/model girl and being a distinctive voice who agitates for a community”. She views her guest editorship as a chance to “share the wealth of opportunities that I’ve been luckily afforded in this industry”
(Nef quoted in Blanks 2016) by inviting an almost exclusively trans cast to feature in the publication alongside her, including Andreja Pejić and lesser known trans models Dara, Torraine Futurum and Avie Acosta, and to collaborate with established artists such as Nan Goldin and Sebastian
Fenae. Blanks argues that “Nef’s Candy is weighted with words as well as pictures, texts that share the experiences of the people in the pages of the magazine”. Nef (quoted in Blanks 2016) posits that her motivation behind her guest editorship is the inauthenticity of a lot of trans representation in fashion:
“gender play, strange beauty, ‘androgyny’ are permitted in fashion and in a general cultural context as indexes, as a look, as a suggestion, as a drag that comes on and off,” but, she continues, “not as an identity, not as being. We want you to look trans, we don’t want you to be trans”.
One way she sought to address this was through the editorial
“Honeymoon”, discussed earlier in this chapter as an example of the rarely-seen narrative of nonfetishised transgender sexuality and desire.
In early 2017, Nef argued via an Instagram image caption:
Images of trans femmes being loved rarely exist outside of pornography. We tend to be hyper-sexualised and objectified
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within the cisgender gaze. Either that or we're dehumanized as scum or (just as bad) untouchable goddesses (Elle Australia 2017).
Nef also commented on Twitter that the editorial was a response to the lack of “images of trans women (with men) that were erotic but tender too” (Elle Australia 2017) in the media. Her work with CANDY offers representations of more nuanced transgender narratives starring actual transgender individuals, which ultimately challenges and expands the typical representations of trans identities in visual culture. This is an explicit example of Nef’s mediation around accountable and meaningful representation of transgender identities and nontokenistic inclusion
Beyond Nef’s explicit spoken mediation and that achieved through her own creative works, Nef also frames herself as a cultural intermediary of fashion and gender through the networks in which she operates inside the fashion industry. Where Legler’s practice of working alongside GNC models often makes a conceptual statement as conceived and executed by creative direction on the specific shoot, Nef aligns herself with brands that seek to portray a gender-progressive image, partly by aligning themselves with her. There is a mutual endorsement here: Nef represents nowness and progressive attitudes towards gender, and the brand appears avant-garde and cool by making nontraditional identities visible in line with their own progressive attitude towards gender. Nef has chiefly achieved this through her ongoing association with Alessandro Michele and the fashion house Gucci.
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When Alessandro Michele became the creative director of Gucci in
2015, he steered the fashion house down a new aesthetic and ideological path. In 2015, the house announced that from 2017 onwards, it would only show a single, mixed-gender runway. Similarly, the colourful and retro-inspired designs the house has consistently produced since
Michele’s takeover have been said to challenge gender norms by mixing gendered garments and bodies underneath a wealth of decoration. Gucci represents a leading force in the movement towards gender-neutral fashion, and part of their success is due to their aligning with high- profile “it” models and influences. Since 2015, Nef has been one of the faces of Gucci, appearing in runway shows and multiple advertising campaigns. In this way, Gucci aligns itself with Nef’s brand of transgender activism and, in turn, Nef is cemented as a cultural intermediary with significant connections to high fashion and a considerable professional and cultural network. This in turn renders
Nef’s image more socially validated, which works to further legitimise her genderqueer identity in the mainstream media.
Conclusion
Nef promotes her identity as a transgender woman and broader issues of transgender rights as culturally valuable and validated through the many platforms of visibility within which she works. In her professional fashion-modelling work, she pointedly uses her transitioning body to trouble gender and gives tangible visibility to the changing nature of the trans experience. Further to this, she actively
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articulates her views on transgender rights and calls on the fashion industry and mainstream society to pay attention to the issues her community faces. Finally, she collaborates within her professional and social networks to produce creative content that reframes the transgender narrative often found in mainstream media. Collectively, she frames the transgender experience as a valid identity, and consolidates the practice of fashion modelling with transgender activism.
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Chapter 8: Richie Shazam Khan
The final case study of this project analyses the work of genderqueer fashion model Richie Shazam Khan. Khan is the fourth and briefest case study of this project, with his first appearances in high fashion only beginning in 2015. As the only unsigned model and POC among the case studies, Khan’s professional work and media presence challenge the structures of the fashion-modelling industry on multiple levels. Like Legler and Nef, Khan has considerable agency over his representation, as a significant amount of his work is the result of his cultural and social networks. Like Legler, Khan too is GNC, and challenges the aesthetics of binary gender through juxtaposing gendered signifiers, such as body hair and feminine body language. This chapter explores how Khan mediates contemporary ideas about queer, nonwhite bodies in an industry and system of representation built on structural heteronormativity and whiteness.
Khan is a New York-born creative and unsigned fashion model of
Guyanese background. He is a curator and arts worker who is heavily entrenched in the New York art and fashion scenes, and has been dubbed a muse to designers and artists in his network. Through Khan’s social connections, he began to appear in fashion performances and runways, fashion editorials and commercial fashion campaigns in 2015.
Khan remains unsigned and is still relatively on the peripheries of
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mainstream fashion, but with each new appearance, his work moves towards the centre of the fashion industry and visual culture.
Since Khan is unsigned, he represents an alternate fashion- modelling practice that is, to an extent, separate from the fashion- modelling industry. Entwistle (2009) describes the industry as the network that gives fashion models their network of influence, and hence their status as cultural intermediaries. However, Khan has gained access to the fashion industry network via his own cultural and social networks, and still performs a commercial function for the designers for whom he models . Being an unsigned model does not preclude Khan from being a cultural intermediary—rather, his unsigned status suggests that he is a part of alternative networks within which he operates and from which he draws his expertise.
Khan identifies as a queer nonbinary person, and throughout media interviews, he is referred to using masculine pronouns. As the only POC studied in this project, Khan represents a fashion-modelling practice that is already at odds with the dominant culture of whiteness (Dyer [1997]
2017) pervasive in the fashion-modelling industry. Further to this, as an unsigned model, his outsider position in the industry renders his work the most of left-of-field analysed in this project. Nonetheless, as is made clear in this chapter, this does not mean Khan’s visibility is not increasingly moving from the peripheries of fashion and visual culture to the centre.
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Troubling Gender
Khan’s portfolio is the smallest of the four case studies, and includes only a handful of runway appearances, commercial campaigns and editorials. Because of this, his work is read as a whole for the ways in which it troubles gender. Khan troubles gender in a consistent manner across these works through the use of his body, the performance of tropes of femininity and the bodily language of fashion.
One of Khan’s first appearances in the fashion industry dates back to late 2015, in the editorial “Richie Shaϟam” in Bullett Magazine. The editorial, photographed by Oscar Ouk, features garments by Ashish,
Moses Gauntlett Cheng and Franziska Fox, and is situated in a collection of nondescript, grungy industrial interior and exterior settings. In each of the six images (see figures 8.1 and 8.2), Khan appears highly styled, with voluminous curly hair, kohl-rimmed eyes and highlighter-enhanced facial features. He is lit by moody, coloured lighting that emphasises the textures of the garments he wears and the textures and curves of his body.
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Figure 8.1: Richie Shazam in “Richie Shaϟam”, Bullett Magazine December 2015, photographed by Oscar Ouk
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Figure 8.2: Richie Shazam in “Richie Shaϟam”, Bullett Magazine December 2015, photographed by Oscar Ouk
In every image, Khan employs dramatic poses to highlight his lean and muscular physique and, where his face can be seen, his strong facial structure. These can be read as fashion poses, as they draw on the visual tropes of fashion photography. They can also be read as feminine poses, mainly by their association with fashion and, more specifically, female fashion models. In some images, codes of pornography can be read in
Khan’s body language, which is a common trope of contemporary fashion photography. Against the bodily language of fashion and sexualised femininity employed here, Khan’s unedited male-sexed body causes juxtaposition: his masculine chest and unedited body hair sit in contrast to his feminine styling. This juxtaposition is particularly poignant in
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images such as the fourth image in Figure 8.1, where traditional symbols of female sexuality—here, high heels, a thigh garter and a seductive pose—are contrasted with subtle hints of body hair and an identifiably male-sexed body. In this way, Khan embodies femininity and masculinity simultaneously, while presenting a sexually charged collection of images that are undoubtedly legible as fashion images. The publication of these images validates his body and his embodied identity as the site of fashion, and also validates Khan within the fashion industry.
Khan’s modelling career to date has included handful of runway appearances, including those for designer showcase Vfiles (Figure 8.3) and labels Ashish (Figure 8.4), Barragan (Figure 8.5), Rachel Comey
(Figure 8.6) and Lous Dallas (Figure 8.7), among others.
Figure 8.3: Richie Shazam in VFiles SS16 runway wearing Moses Gauntlett Cheng
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Figure 8.4: (Top left) Richie Shazam Khan in Ashish SS 2017 Ready-to-wear runway, NYFW
Figure 8.5: (Top right) Richie Shazam Khan in Barragan SS 2017 Ready-to-wear runway, NYFW
Figure 8.6: (Bottom left) Richie Shazam Khan in Rachel Comey SS 2017 Ready-to-wear runway
Figure 8.7: (Bottom right) Richie Shazam Khan in Lou Dallas FW 2017 runway, Office Magazine 2017
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In his runway appearances, Khan brings the same queer embodiment to his performance as in the Bullett editorial. His body is styled using techniques of femininity such as makeup, styled hair, feminine garments and high heels, yet his unedited body can be read culturally as male through the signifiers of body hair, a flat masculine chest and the shadow of facial hair. His runway appearances could be read as reframing traditionally ‘masculine’ bodily features as beautiful and feminine. For example, in the Rachel Comey runway (see Figure 8.6),
Khan’s look is described as “slouchy pants and an itty bitty crop top that revealed tufts of chest hair” (Satenstein 2016). The simplicity of this outfit and the confidence with which Khan wears it works in two directions: first, to remove any idea of gimmicky gender play, and second, to challenge how we engender facets of an outfit such as garment shape and physical characteristics such as body hair.
On Khan, Comey’s cropped camisole has a sensuality in the way it closely fits his torso and reveals sections of skin and body hair. Even though this garment shape would be read culturally as feminine, it looks at home on the confident and relaxed Khan. Similarly, the way in which the garment reveals body hair sits in contrast to this garment shape’s usual function, which is to reveal décolletage and cleavage; in this way, on Khan, the garment reframes body hair as potentially sensual and not inherently unfeminine. Khan’s use of traditionally feminine garment shapes, paired with his natural body hair, challenges even gender-fluid aesthetics, as most performances of femininity involve removing body
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hair. Whilst it could be said that Khan resembles gender fluid icon and musician Prince with his dark curls, kohl rimmed eyes and retro aesthetic, here Khan does not employ the same kind of pop drag aesthetics to trouble gender. In Comey’s design, Khan challenges gender through the seemingly natural adoption of Comey’s style of American minimalist fashion, without relying on flamboyant decoration to signal gender nonconformity. Khan’s queer embodied performance thus works to trouble the aesthetics of the gender binary in a more subtle and everyday way, with Comey’s work effectively mainstreaming Khan’s gender nonconformity.
Beyond the runway, Khan has appeared in several editorial-style photo series in collaboration with photographers from Khan’s creative networks. These include a collaboration with photographer Dicko Chan, published by Dazed & Confused, and with fashion photographer Terry
Richardson, published in his personal online archives.
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Figure 8.8: Richie Shazam Khan in excerpts from photo series for Dazed & Confused online February 2016, photographed by Dicko Chan
In the photoseries published by Dazed & Confused (Figure 8.8),
Khan appears in retro styling in varying states of undress, from being entirely naked except for a veiled face to wearing thigh-high boots and a high-cut black leotard. The black-and-white images use high contrast to emphasise the textures across Khan’s hair and body. Khan’s hair is either styled in voluminous curls or smoothed down into sleek finger waves. As in the work previously discussed, Khan once again displays a gendered juxtaposition between his feminine styling and use of the feminised body language of fashion, and his body, which is read culturally as male. The portrait-style images have a powerful drama to them, and draw on tropes of modernist portraiture in parts. In Khan’s (quoted in Cafolla
2016) own analysis of the photoseries, he argues that “the pictures are beautifully queer—they resist binaries and exist in the space of fluidity
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and a rejection of what we are told of what is acceptable and what we are taught and told of what is beautiful”. Khan’s comments reflect the gender play occurring in these images, which is achieved through minimalist styling and the gendered juxtapositions playing out on Khan’s body.
In a similar style to his work with Dicko Chan, Khan worked with photographer Terry Richardson on several occasions throughout 2015.
Richardson is now viewed as highly problematic, with multiple cases of sexual allegations and an ongoing investigation by authorities levelled against him—but at the time he created these images of Khan, they were read as fashion images, and Richardson’s work in fashion photography and celebrity portraiture was highly circulated in visual culture. In Figure
8.9, we see Khan in an outtake of a studio session with Richardson in
May 2015, and in figures 8.10 and 8.11, we see Khan in outtakes from a studio shoot alongside model and Austrian rapper Candy Ken in
November 2015.
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Figure 8.9: “Richie at my studio #24”, by Terry Richardson
Figure 8.10: “Richie Shazam and Candy Ken at my studio #1”, by Terry Richardson Figure 8.11: Richie Shazam at my studio #2”, by Terry Richardson
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Richardson’s images of Khan are loaded with the languages of fashion and gender and the glamourised aesthetics of pornography. In
Figure 8.9, Khan is dressed only in high-cut leather underwear and thigh- high, black PVC boots. Khan wears his hair naturally, and has his signature kohl-rimmed eyes and red lipstick. Khan’s stance is consciously presenting his body to the camera, with his arms raised over his heads, one hip pushed forward and shoulders back to form an arch. This stance, aided by his high-heeled boots, presents the body as sexualised and exhibitionist, a commonly used stance in sexualised imagery of women.
The curves of his body shape again render his body a feminised subject, and the garments themselves allude to fetish wear. Khan’s use of his body in this pose, paired with his sexual but feminised styling, contrasts with his male-sexed body, which, in this image, proudly displays his body hair. Khan’s sultry expression reads as confident and sexual, and makes the image a proud statement of self and embodied sexuality.
In figures 8.10 and 8.11, Khan once again uses his body to powerfully perform the feminine. In these images, Khan’s sultriness is contrasted with the hard masculinity and pornographically hairless body of male model Candy Ken. Khan is styled in a fur jacket, with dark, smoky eye makeup, red lipstick and patent leather heels, calling upon notions of luxury and stylised femininity. Conversely, Ken is in tight briefs and covered in Hello Kitty stickers. His body is overly muscular and entirely hairless. These bodies can be read culturally as male, with two significantly different approaches to mixing the masculine and the
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feminine: Khan performs the feminine in a sultry, embodied manner, which is contrasted only with hints of body and facial hair; Ken performs the overt masculine through his muscular physique, but can also be read as feminine overtly because of the association with Hello Kitty, or more subtly through his highly groomed body. Like the male models of the
1980s, Candy Ken may be read as classically homoerotic and portraying adonic power through his physical strength, whereas Khan portrays more hedonic power in his latent sexuality and sensuality. Collectively, these images work to confuse gender by centring the body as a site for juxtaposition and a play on gendered aesthetics across two individuals assigned male at birth.
Finally, Khan has appeared in several commercial fashion campaign videos, including H&M’s “Bring it on” campaign video by Crystal Moselle and the Músed FW16 campaign video. These films vary greatly in design and message. The H&M video is designed to encourage customers to bring their old garments into H&M stores to be recycled. The film proposes ideals of sustainability, valuing the garment and extending garment lifecycles. Khan features in the film momentarily in two places: first, as the voiceover explains that a consumer’s repurposed garment could be worn by someone else “like her … or him”, we see Khan in a green, sequinned dress standing on a city street. Next, he appears dressed in jeans and a jacket alongside another model, with whom we see Khan running and playfully interacting in an industrial carpark space.
It is significant that Khan as an unsigned model with niche appeal is
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modelling for H&M, the world’s second largest fashion retailer, in their sustainability marketing campaign. This is a literal example of Braidotti’s
(2011) concept of the commodification of differences, as the inclusion of
Khan’s gender nonconformity endows this campaign with a sense of political progressiveness, furthering the progressive message of sustainability it seeks to convey. Khan is a symbol of progressiveness within this commercial context, and even though his inclusion could be read as tokenistic, the campaign is nonetheless a highly mainstream platform via which Khan’s embodied performance of gender nonconformity is made visible and valuable to a broad audience.
In the Músed FW16 campaign video, Khan appears alongside four other youthful models of varying genders in a fashion film set in a classical sculpture exhibit inside the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The film shows the models dancing and lightheartedly engaging with the space, their bodies set against the sculptures and paintings that surround them. Over the top of the image, text is inserted in frames and appropriates Calvin Klein’s “In my Calvins” campaign, with phrases such as “I co-opt in my MÚSED” and “I transcend in my MÚSED”. The video evokes a sense of youth and defiance, with clear reference to art and classical aesthetics.
In both films, Khan acts as a symbol of gender fluidity, youth and social progression. Although he only makes a brief appearance in the
H&M video, his gender nonconformity is highlighted in a punchy moment
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to identify the campaign’s alignment with progressive ideas of gender.
Similarly, in the Músed campaign video, Khan acts among a group of relatively gender-diverse models to form a contemporary and edgy aesthetic. He is styled in feminine clothing to place gender nonconformity at the forefront of this campaign’s aesthetic. In this way,
Khan acts as a symbol of transgressive gender identity and a sign of contemporary identity ideals.
Throughout his (albeit relatively brief) body of work, Khan troubles gendered aesthetics deftly through the use of his embodied queer identity. His image presents a gender paradox in how he contrasts his body, which is read culturally as male, with his performance of femininity. Khan strongly uses the language of fashion, and hence the language of femininity, to position the body as spectacle in a manner that challenges the logic of gendered aesthetics. In this way, Khan consciously and commercially embodies his queer gender identity to aesthetically challenge the gender binary.
Khan as Cultural Intermediary
Khan presents his personal approach to identity and fashion modelling through interviews published on fashion and news media platforms. He discusses how his personal identity is central to his fashion-modelling practice, and how it fuels his political motivation for being made visible. Throughout these interviews, Khan reflects on ideas about noncategorisation, challenging mainstream and binary systems,
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and his organic move into modelling. Khan’s fashion-modelling work is often a collaboration with, or initiated by, friends who seek him out because of his developed sense of style, and he therefore retains a high level of agency in his work. This practice of fashion modelling is similar to that of Casey Legler’s: both Khan and Legler achieve the status of cultural intermediary through pre-existing connections and retain agency over their representation, and their mediation is intentional and explicitly described via their own commentary. This sits in contrast to a model such as Andreja Pejić, whose mediation of gender trouble is less intentional, especially at the beginning of her career. Like Legler, fashion modelling is not so much a commercial necessity for Khan, but appears to be more an extension of his creative and social practices.
While Khan’s career has so far produced only a small amount of media content to be studied in this project, reviewing the headlines about him gives a sense of his growth in popularity since 2016 and his capacity for mediation. In February 2016, Dazed & Confused online labelled him “The West Indian Muse storming NY’s club circuit” (Cafolla
2016), and by September, Vogue online was asking their readers to
“meet Instagram obsession Richie Shazam Khan, the Downtown kid changing the face of modelling” (Satenstein 2016). By April 2017, New
York Magazine’s The Cut wrote about “The model, artist, and activist subverting the gender binary” (Whitney 2017); the following month,
LGBTQ+ news media SITE Intomore profiled Khan as a model to watch;
Paper Magazine announced, “Richie Shazam is a next gen model activist”
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(Hanson 2017) in July of the same year. These articles progressively identify Khan’s capacity to challenge gender stereotypes through his practice as a model, and align his political practice with that of an activist. Khan reinforces these ideas throughout these profile pieces, expanding on how his gender identity and politics of appearance have merged with his newfound role of fashion model.
The Dazed & Confused article by Anna Cafolla was published alongside a photoseries by Dicko Chan, which was analysed earlier in the chapter. The accompanying text begins by discussing the intentions behind the images and the connection between Khan and Chan, described by Khan (quoted in Cafolla 2016) as a “match made in heaven”. Cafolla contends that in his modelling practice, Khan “plays out our perceptions of masculinity and femininity to his own tune”, and as
“model and creative muse”, his collaboration with Chan works to
“explore androgyny and contrasting gender aesthetics”.
The piece continues with a question-and-answer dialogue between
Cafolla and Khan. Khan (quoted in Cafolla 2016) offers his thoughts on how his position as ‘other’ is an intersection of gender and race in identity politics, saying that “queerness is my second skin”. He explains,
“within the media portrayal of beauty, I find myself on the peripheral. I hope to re-shape the definition of what is seen as beautiful and showcase myself within a wider arena” (Khan quoted in Cafolla 2016).
Khan notes that growing up as a queer brown person, there were very
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few representations of identities like his to aspire to in popular media.
He believes that representation is central for young people’s formation of identity, as it gives them permission to express their selves safely and acts as tangible evidence that they have a community with shared experiences:
I want to be a trailblazer that transgresses the antiquated notions of what it means to be a man. I want to contribute to reinventing masculinity. Part of what makes me stronger as a male-identified person is my femininity. My balls of steel are equally as fragile and sensitive as a pussy—just like my masculinity (Khan quoted in Cafolla 2016).
In this way, Khan is very explicit about his intentions when it comes to his visibility in fashion and popular media, and thus in fulfilling his role as cultural intermediary—he makes his queer embodied identity visible not only to offer representation for marginalised identities, but also challenge and expand the narrow, mainstream representation of beauty ideals in visual culture.
In Vogue, Liana Satenstein (2016) contends that Khan is the latest
Instagram influencer to enter the modelling industry as a disruptive force, and is “at the crest of the newest, inclusive-friendly wave of modelling”. Her article details Khan’s background and early life, explaining how he felt like a black sheep and how this fuelled the formation of his personal style. While this profile piece generally summarises information presented about Khan elsewhere, Satenstein concludes with Khan’s comments on how he views himself as not just a
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fashion model, but quite literally as a model of identity: “I want young kids growing up in the social media era to see me, and say, ‘Oh, Richie is doing it’” (Khan quoted in Satenstein 2016). He continues:
I don’t know if I identify as a boy or a girl but I want to wear a dress if I feel like it. Or I want to wear pants and a tuxedo jacket. I know what it is like to be bullied. I know what it is like to be tormented. It has driven me to be courageous (Khan quoted in Satenstein 2016).
Khan’s comments again signal that he is highly aware of his capacity to negotiate his identity, and give further insight into his motivation for making it so visible. He contends that experiencing discrimination has driven him to force visual culture to make him seen and, in doing so, offer solidarity to young people who also experience otherness in society.
In April 2017, the subset of New York Magazine, The Cut, published
“The model, artist and activist subverting the gender binary”, an article about Khan by Christine Whitney. Describing him as a “multi-hyphenate who truly defies categorization” (Whitney 2017), Whitney discusses
Khan’s background and professional history as a fashion and arts worker before citing his connections to photographer friends such as Ryan
McGinley, Yuki James and Terry Richardson as gateways to his newfound position of “fashion world darling”. In the question-and-answer section of the piece, Khan goes into detail about his intentional anticategorisation. He argues, “I don’t want to be placed in categories …
I want to defy labels” (Khan quoted in Whitney 2017). He explains that
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he actively tries to challenge the gender binary by adorning himself depending on mood, not on preconceived ideas of gender. Khan (quoted in Whitney 2017) posits:
It’s an idea the really goes against the way we are programmed to think. We are coded to behave in this regimented way and my whole being is about rebellion and breaking free.
To challenge this regimentation, Khan (quoted in Whitney 2017) explains that he is actively involved in activism and “always expressing (his) transgressive nature”. He argues that this need to defy category is given a platform in fashion, as “Fashion and art are vehicles that give me agency to exist and show others that they can excel” (Khan quoted in
Whitney 2017).
This article articulates the connections between Khan’s personal identity, activism and practice as a fashion model. In many ways, these facets of Khan’s identity are synonymous; his lived embodied experience as a queer nonbinary POC is his activism, and his activism is his practice as a fashion model. His intentional mediation of queer identity positions his work as embodied activism and as a form of aesthetic labour that is highly political.
One final media profile worth analysing is by Carolyn Hanson and appears in Paper Magazine. The profile addresses Khan as “a rising star in the worlds of fashion, media, and activism” (Hanson 2017). In this article, Khan extends on the ideas presented in Whitney’s piece, further articulating the nature of his activism. “My activism isn't your typical
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activism,” he states; "I'm not just calling politicians or rallying or signing petitions. My activism is something that I have been practicing from the day I was born’” (Khan quoted in Hanson 2017). Khan argues that making his embodied identity visible is his form of activism, because although adhering closer to societal guidelines of identity would inevitably ‘make life easier’ for him, covering up would not be “leading the way for my queer brothers and sisters” (Khan quoted in Hanson 2017). Khan (quoted in Hanson 2017) argues that at the centre of visible, embodied practice is “the importance of denouncing silence through radically re-imagining queer visibility”. This article reframes the term ‘activist’ to include the activities Khan undertakes to maintain his queer visibility: “his activism is in his words, presence, and spirit as much as it is in the things we would conventionally think of as activism” (Hanson 2017). Here, the notion of attaining and maintaining visibility is framed as activism. While this would not be considered activism for all fashion models, because
Khan’s identity challenges the norms of visual culture so acutely, his identity being made visible is actively challenging systems of representation, and can therefore be read as activism within itself.
Conclusion
Khan offers an insightful example of a genderqueer fashion model as a cultural intermediary operating outside some of the established industry structures to which the other three case studies conform. First, he is a POC, and his physicality challenges the Eurocentric beauty standards and cultural whiteness that define the fashion-modelling
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industry. His prominent activism, which firmly centres his racial identity, lies at the heart of his modelling practice. Khan (quoted in Hanson 2017) is “re-imagining queer visibility” by making his embodied experience as a queer POC not only visible, but culturally and commercially sanctioned within the fashion industry, which is otherwise geared towards hegemony.
Second, Khan is nonbinary and chooses not to alter his physicality to fit neatly into the gender binary. For example, he maintains his body hair, which often features prominently in his fashion performances, despite it being culturally deemed unfeminine. Like Legler, Richie could be described as GNC, whereas Pejić and Nef identify as feminine- presenting women. In this way, Legler and Khan visibly articulate the liminal space between masculine and feminine aesthetics by juxtaposing their physical sexed body against their dressed body. While Butler’s work stops short of describing the physical substance of “gender trouble”, we can consider these models an example of their challenges to normative gender. Khan’s queer embodiment is an example of “subverting and displacing those naturalized and reified notions of gender” through
“subversive confusion” through the cultural norms of gendered aesthetics “posturing as the foundational illusions of identity” (Butler
[1990] 1999, 46).
Finally, Khan represents a visibility and negotiation of queer identity that sits outside the mainstream and is inherently less
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commercially motivated than the other case studies. Khan is invited to feature in fashion imagery because of his position within existing networks. Therefore, he still has the capacity to be a cultural intermediary—he remains involved in selling products and concepts, but his expertise as a cultural intermediary is not dependent on his professional status as a signed model. This contrasts with the other case studies, the subjects of which gained greater visibility and voice after being signed as models.
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Chapter 9: Discussion and Conclusion
The central intention of this thesis was to explore the cultural function of genderqueer fashion models. The hypothesis was that genderqueer fashion models, in their position as cultural intermediaries, mediate diverse gender identities as culturally valuable by validating them in a commercial context. They do this by commercially embodying their queer gender identities, expressed through their aesthetic labour in visual work and promotion of self in the media. This project’s aims were to contribute to an understanding of the genderqueer fashion model by documenting the rise of this phenomenon, analysing the negotiations of gender in the photographic work and the media presence of genderqueer fashion models, highlighting the gender tensions that the bodies of these models provoke and, finally, interrogating the rise of genderqueer models in relation to questions of intersectionality— specifically, how their visibility depends on the way in which the fashion system privileges whiteness and thinness.
This study has reframed the fashion model as an active contributor to social agendas, and has thus opened up a line of inquiry into the cultural function of contemporary fashion models. In assessing the rise of the phenomenon of genderqueer fashion models, this thesis has applied two main concepts to analysing and interpreting the case studies: Butler’s ([1990] 1999) gender trouble and Bourdieu’s (1984) cultural intermediation.
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This concluding chapter discusses the findings presented in the case study chapters, and the project’s contribution to knowledge. At the heart of this research project is the central research question of how genderqueer fashion models validate nonheteronormative identities and contribute to the wider debate on gender. The thesis has also addressed two subquestions:
• How are genderqueer fashion models mainstreaming trans and
genderqueer identities?
• How do these models operate as both commercial and political
identities through the existing structures of the fashion-
modelling industry?
These research questions act as a framework to guide the discussion of the findings in this section. To begin, it is worth reminding the reader of the ground covered thus far.
This project has explored the contextual and theoretical underpinnings of the phenomenon of genderqueer fashion models, and undertaken a sustained analysis of the careers of the four genderqueer models chosen as case studies. The methodology chapter established the research design as an interdisciplinary study based on the interpretive analysis of visual and written texts involving four genderqueer fashion models via a case study approach. This analysis has been connected to gender theory primarily through the lens of Butler’s ([1990] 1999) work on reconceptualising gender.
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Chapter 3: Gender and the Fashion Model in History reviewed the complex relationship between fashion models and gender since their emergence in the late nineteenth century. This chapter began by examining the complex relationship between fashion and gender, and then gave an overview of the existing theorisations of the gendered function of the fashion model. Mears (2011, 16) theorises fashion modelling as “the professionalisation of gender performances” and a
“prime site to see the construction of masculinity and femininity” within visual culture. Similarly, Craik (1994, 44) positions the fashion model as part of the system of heteronormative gender reproduction, as they teach female consumers “techniques of femininity”. This study follows
Mears’ argument that fashion models are a visual representations of dominant beauty ideals, becoming “prescriptions for masculinity and femininity” (16). In the context of consumer culture and advertising featuring fashion models, Hancock and Karaminas (2014, 270) argue that fashion models represent "purchasable socially desirable bodies and identities”. Additionally, Evans (2001, 273) asserts that the fashion model’s role "permits the modelling of gendered identity as a cultural construct”. In the case of male models, Entwistle and Mears (2012) contend that the fashion-modelling industry, and the fashion industry itself, is an inverted gender hierarchy where women and queer men are dominant. In this context, male models must “drag up”, deploying “non- normative gender and sexual identities” that “have the potential to upset heteronormative discourses” (Entwistle and Mears 2012, 321). This
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project extends on Entwistle and Mears’ work by articulating a function of the fashion model that surpasses heteronormative gender and, in doing so, draws on the inherently queer nature of fashion to queer codes of gender. In this way, Mears and Entwistle’s proposition of an inverted gender hierarchy articulates the context within which genderqueer models gain access to the industry.
Chapter 3 then gave a brief history of the fashion model, and asserted that fashion models reflect, embody and perpetuate dominant ideals of gender (particularly femininity). It also unpacked how the end of the twentieth century saw a shift towards broader understandings of gender and identity via the emergence of queer theory and the work of
Judith Butler, alongside which aesthetic pluralism prompted the diversifying of model aesthetics. Woven through this were the history, developments and concepts of gender discourse since the mid-twentieth century. This was done to contextualise the use of Butler’s theory of gender trouble as an interpretive lens for analysing the project’s case studies.
Next, Chapter 4 looked specifically at the emergence of the contemporary, genderqueer fashion model, and the functions they perform as cultural intermediary. Fashion models were established as cultural intermediaries (Entwistle and Wissinger 2006, Wissinger 2009,
Entwistle 2006) within consumer culture, where goods and people are traded for their symbolic value. In the system of consumer culture,
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cultural intermediaries are actors who sit between the production and consumption of goods. Cultural intermediaries frame the symbolic value of goods, including products, services, ideas and behaviours, and incidentally legitimise the value of behaviours, lifestyles and identifiers, while also making it desirable through their work.
In previous studies, the fashion model has been identified as a cultural intermediary (Wissinger 2009) that performs aesthetic labour
(Entwistle and Wissinger 2006) through mediating notions of beauty and fashionability. The function of the fashion model as cultural intermediary is to create cultural value and capital through their visibility in fashion and visual culture. Following Entwistle (2006) and
Wissinger (2009), this project contends that since its inception, the fashion model has always been a locus for taste-making and a mediator of gender ideals.
This chapter also interrogated the conditions of the genderqueer fashion model’s visibility, including cultural whiteness, the liberal gaze and the impact of images, and the limits of post-gender performances.
This discussion problematises the genderqueer fashion model as capable of both challenging dominant norms of representation, but also potentially reinforcing them.
Following this, the four case studies presented and analysed the work and public outputs of four genderqueer fashion models: Andreja
Pejić, Casey Legler, Hari Nef and Richie Shazam Khan. Each revealed a
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distinct approach to troubling gender through their visual presence in both niche and mainstream media.
This chapter now discusses what is mediated via the visual and written texts these models produce, and how each case study contributes to answering the central research questions of this project.
Findings
The four case studies analysed in this project provide specific examples to answer the research question, “How do genderqueer fashion models validate nonheteronormative identities and contribute to the broader social understandings of gender?”
First, genderqueer fashion models validate nonheteronormative identities by commercially embodying their non-normative gender identity, positioning their personal narrative at the centre of their public fashion-modelling practice and visibility in the media. They do this primarily by integrating their personal gendered identity into their professional aesthetic labour as a fashion model. In many instances, they use the aesthetics of their personal gender identity and gender expression in their professional modelling practice, which often works to trouble gender. However, at the same time, their visual aesthetic is also directed by other creatives involved in producing fashion imagery. In this scenario, these genderqueer fashion models have consistently engaged with themes of gender play in their professional work, which in turn reveals gender as a performance and further contributes to their
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mediation of less prescriptive conceptualisations and visualisations of gender.
A second way in which these genderqueer fashion models validate nonheteronormative identities is in how they dictate their defining narrative of visibility by asserting agency in the selection and publication of works. The level of visibility also depends on how genderqueer fashion models build and manage their networks. As seen particularly in the work of Legler and Khan, accessing these networks to exercise a greater level of agency indicates these models’ position as cultural intermediary. As Smith Maguire and Matthews (2014) explain, the level of framing and impact a cultural intermediary can achieve is determined in part by the networks within which they operate. In this way, genderqueer fashion models have the potential to use their network connections to explicitly frame cultural goods with an intentional message. In this context, those cultural goods are their identities—and more broadly, non-normative gender identities—that they are reframing as valid and fashionable via their work as fashion models. They are adding cultural value to non-normative identities and thus validating them.
Another way in which genderqueer fashion models generally place their personal gender identity at the centre of their professional practice is by explicitly communicating their personal gender identity and politics via media representations of their story. Every case study discussed in
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this project has multiple instances of media coverage in which the model relates a personal story of finding their identity, their struggles with discrimination and their message around gender. This tactic has parallels with the concept of ‘narrativity’ taken from queer theory (Giddens 1991;
McAdams 1993, 2001). Narrativity offers a framework for discussing gender identity that accounts for its nuances and variances, and forms a way of seeing that considers the overlapping social structures that alter the individual formation of identity. Each genderqueer fashion model uses their personal narrativity to frame their professional practice and political message about gender. For Pejić and Nef, this ‘message’ is about transgender rights and meaningful representations of transgender identities. For Legler, it is about provoking conversations about difference and acceptance and asking the public to see past gender. For
Khan, it is about defying categorisation and using visibility as support and solidarity for young people who are ‘othered’ by a lack of representation in visual culture.
The models’ strategy of constantly feeding their personal narrative to frame and disseminate their political agenda around gender complements their tactic of troubling gender in their professional modelling work. Again, while not every fashion image featuring a genderqueer model communicates their specific narrative of gender identity, quite often, their work troubles gender in one of several ways: by revealing gender as a performance, by disrupting the gender binary via performing across and between the binary categories of gender, by
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using post-gender aesthetics to undermine the gender binary or by using fashion imagery to tell new queered narratives about gender identity.
Holistically, these aesthetic strategies are used to construct a visibility that troubles gender and communicates contemporary ideas about it.
Regarding the second part of the central research question, which asks how genderqueer fashion models contribute to the wider debate on gender, I contend that genderqueer fashion models do this in two ways: first, by broadcasting their lived experience and political message in a highly visible format, via which they mediate diverse genders as valuable; and second, by representing a broader range of gender identities beyond the work of heteronormative fashion models. While the impact these models have on the progression of gender discourse is a measurable outcome beyond the scope of this project, it stands to reason that as this phenomenon increases, more representations of nonheteronormative genders will proliferate in mainstream media and visual culture. If “technologies of gender” (De Lauretis 1987) and, specifically, “techniques of femininity” (Craik 1994) are learnt through visual culture, such as film, television, advertisements and fashion media, and if the dominant aesthetics of fashion models set the standard for ideals of beauty, which in turn trickle down throughout visual culture, it also stands to reason that an increasing presence of genderqueer fashion models will extend more restrictive contemporary ideals of beauty to include more instances that are not centred on heteronormative aesthetics and identities. Thus, increasingly, the media
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through which technologies of gender are learnt will represent more diverse, less heteronormative ideas of gender. That is, the increasing prominence of genderqueer fashion models in the fashion industry and visual culture has the potential to, in a small way, bridge the gap between gender theory and societal understandings of gender.
While the case studies analysed generally support this project’s proposition that genderqueer fashion models are mainstreaming what were previously marginalised identities, there are limitations and contentions to the nature of their mediation. The following sections discuss the more nuanced considerations of genderqueer fashion models’ function as cultural intermediaries of diverse gender identities as uncovered in the case studies. They address the following areas of contention: visibility as a problematic outcome, intersectionality, transgender models reinforcing heteronormative aesthetics and genderqueer fashion models as a trend or lasting feature in the context of late capitalism.
Intersectionality Across the four case studies analysed in this project and the broader phenomenon of genderqueer fashion models, intersectionality is an important and critical issue. This section explores the question of intersectionality and cultural whiteness in relation to each of the four model’s visibilities, and how this in turn reflects broader issues of diversity in the fashion-modelling industry.
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The public and professional acceptance of Pejić’s transition could be characterised as conditional on the other kinds of privilege her identity enacts beyond gender. Pejić’s identity enacts several areas of privilege: she is white, her aesthetic adheres to Eurocentric beauty ideals, she is able-bodied and thin, she is English-speaking, and her profession affords her a privilege of some economic security and considerable cultural capital, therefore aligning her with a privileged class. As a transgender woman, she also has the privilege of ‘passing’— that is, her aesthetic is congruent with normative aesthetics of femininity. To contest this, she does not have cisprivilege (the idea that her gender identity matches her assigned sex at birth) and she is a refugee of war from a self-made, working-class background.
These considerations are at the centre of current debates in intersectional feminism, an increasingly important framework within contemporary gender discourse. While not specifically levelled at Pejić’s transition, in light of some of the more critical analysis of Caitlyn
Jenner’s transition, it could be said that Pejić was afforded such a supported transition because of the way in which her aesthetics fit so many cultural beauty ideals, and only challenged these ideals through her non-normative gender.
However, as one of the first figures to publicly transition, the privilege of transgressing only in her gender identity may have been crucial to Pejić’s acceptance. As the visibility of trans identities increases
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across visual culture, it could be said that early visible transgender identities such as Pejić, despite the contradictions she represents, acted as a catalyst for the shift towards gender diversity in the fashion- modelling industry. While genderqueer models that succeeded Pejić have been able to further push the codes of conventional gendered beauty ideals, their progress has arguably been made viable because of the incremental acceptance and visibility initiated by Pejić’s career. This project proposes that Pejić’s normative appeal was the linchpin to her success, and as the first major transgender high-fashion model, her acceptance acted as a gateway for other genderqueer fashion models.
Casey Legler and Hari Nef share some common privileges that must be considered in light of their success and visibility. Like Pejić, they are both white, English-speaking, able-bodied and thin individuals. While not as typically Eurocentrically-looking as Pejić, they share the common markers of beauty: clear skin, symmetrical features and strong facial structure. Aesthetically, they are not out of place in a cohort of modern- day models. However, their education sets them apart. Both Legler and
Nef are university educated, which is reflected in their deft ability to articulate their political agendas. Both Legler and Nef have had their writing published in The Guardian and feminist newsletter Lenny, respectively, and both are well read in feminist gender theory. Their capacity to explicitly communicate ideas about gender, which greatly bolsters their overall mediation, is thus enhanced by their experience with gender theory and written and verbal communication. While Pejić
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speaks knowledgeably on the topic of gender and identity, it is significant that two of the more visible genderqueer fashion models are educated art school graduates, as this is a different kind of privilege their identities enact. Bourdieu (1984) asserts that there is a close relationship between education and cultural capital, and that generally the more educated a subject is, the greater their cultural competency.
Legler and Nef particularly demonstrate this competency through their skilful oration and knowledge of cultural and theoretical fields. This gives their message credibility and the weight of scholarly research, which, in an increasingly articulate media culture, may contribute to their acceptance.
Most significantly of the four case studies, Khan represents an important intersection that reveals the constraints of the genderqueer fashion model phenomenon. As the only POC included in the case studies, and the only unsigned model, his cultural background and position outside the mainstream industry reveals a clear bias within the phenomenon, which has a significant lack of racial diversity; this was especially the case in its early stages. While this imbalance is consistent with the fashion-modelling industry more broadly, it is particularly acute in the cohort of genderqueer fashion models. According to the Fall 2018
Fashion diversity report by The Fashion Spot, the Fall/Winter 2018 runways featured 64 gender-diverse models, and only 18.75% were models of colour (Tai 2018). Compared with the industry average of
32.5% models of colour in the same season (Tai 2018), this figure is
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particularly low. Having said this, a 13.75% disparity is exceptional compared with previous seasons. In the Fall 2017 Fashion diversity report, there were only 12 reported gender-diverse castings; the majority of castings were white models (theFashionSpot 2017).
Despite his popularity with fashion creative and photographers,
Khan remains unsigned. While there is no literature to suggest whether this is by choice, the fact remains that among dozens of signed gender- diverse fashion models, only a handful are models of colour.
This suggests that while the phenomenon of genderqueer fashion models does in some ways challenge societal norms around certain categories of identity, in other ways, it relies on and perhaps even perpetuates structural discrimination. The entrenched cultural whiteness that underpins the fashion-modelling industry is slowly being challenged through increased representations across the industry, but genderqueer models specifically are still very much negotiating its effects.
Transgender models and the reinforcement of binary aesthetics A criticism frequently levelled at transgender women is that by swapping genders across binaries, they are still essentially reconfirming the gender binary and its associated societal impacts. With this criticism in mind, one must ask if transgender models Andreja Pejić and Hari Nef are in fact challenging the gender binary when their work sometimes reinforces heteronormative feminine beauty ideals.
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In response to this criticism, one can refer to notions of narrativity developed by feminist and queer studies (Giddens 1991; McAdams 1993,
2001), which call to validate the individual process of subjectivity and forming gender identity. A critique of binary trans individuals (in contrast to gender-nonconforming trans identities) places onus onto the individual, as though it is their responsibility to not only be highly educated in contemporary gender discourse, but to define their gender identity in only the most progressive terms—as though identifying as
‘just a woman’ is not enough (despite being socialised in a highly heteronormative, binary system). Similarly, Koyama (2003, 246) argues that while transfeminism asks “women, including trans women, to examine how we all internalize heterosexist and patriarchal gender mandates”, ultimately, trans women who present within binary aesthetics should not be charged with the responsibility of singlehandedly disrupting it. Such a “purity test is disempowering to women because it denies our agency”, and only alienates women, trans and not, from engaging in feminist activism (Koyama 2003, 246).
Hari Nef spoke on these same criticisms in her TEDx Talk
#FreeTheFemme: The aesthetics of survival in May 2016. As discussed in
Chapter 7, her TEDx Talk explains that for many transgender women, abiding by traditionally feminine aesthetics is literally a matter of life and death. While Nef and Pejić may appear to be out of harm’s way, the statistics of violence against transgender individuals, particularly transgender women of colour, demonstrate a social imperative to adhere
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to binary aesthetics. Criticisms of this practice demonstrate tone- deafness to the lived experience of trans individuals.
Further to this, the general criticism of normative-presenting trans people only works to undermine transgender individuals. Just as there is space for cisgendered men and women in contemporary understandings of the ‘gender spectrum’, so too is there space for trans women and trans men. Despite society’s developing understandings of gendered aesthetics beyond the gender binary, transgender identities are still greatly disruptive to the heteronormative and essentialist order of the heteronormative matrix (Butler [1990] 1999).
Trend or incremental change in advanced capitalism The continual increase in the number of genderqueer models, the way that their presence is changing the fashion-modelling industry, and the fact that fashion is changing more broadly towards gender diversity, suggests a system of incremental change. This notion of ‘incrementalism’ is often used to explain broad social and political shifts that happen over time. Incrementalism is a contemporary political philosophy espousing that “change is best enacted gradually” (Sullivan 2009, 250) and is
“psychologically intuitive” (Sullivan 2009, 250) to the human condition, which is generally risk-averse. In this way, the incremental increase in genderqueer models appearing in the fashion industry and visual culture slowly chips away at existing heteronormative beauty standards, thus transforming the industry image by image.
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However, while some of the politics of the genderqueer fashion models studied in this project are defiantly antiestablishment and anticapitalist, it is also important to note that the commodification of peripheral identities is in fact a trope of advanced capitalism. As discussed in Chapter 4, a symptom of advanced capitalism is the
“commodification of differences” (Braidotti 2011, 27). Therefore, on the one hand, the success and visibility of genderqueer models can be read as a socially progressive movement that has emerged organically from the industry and is separate from the logic of profit. On the other hand, as Braidotti (2011) argues, the commodification of diverse genders offers a way forward for the fashion industry, updating the antiquated ideals of binary gender upon which it was built and proposing new looks, taste, products and stories that are readily integrated within the fashion system of constant change. That is, while the phenomenon of genderqueer fashion models may present as a diversifying, progressive fashion born of social reform, it is inevitably part of the all-consuming and cleverly flexible system of advanced capitalism.
Braidotti (2011, 25) makes her arguments about advanced capitalism from an analysis of consumption:
Advanced capitalism is a difference engine in that it promotes the marketing of pluralistic differences and the commodification of existence, the culture, the discourses of ‘others,’ for the purpose of consumerism (added emphasis).
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Further to this, Braidotti (2011, 27) continues that this consumption of commodified differences often happens at the expense of the identities being commodified. However in the context this study, I contend that the role that cultural intermediaries play “as they perform critical operations in the production and promotion of consumption” (Smith
Maguire and Matthews 2014, 13) may partly challenge Braidotti’s position. Genderqueer fashion models confound the distinction between consumption and identity because the political agendas at the centre of their practice are embedded in their commercial function – that is to say that it is the very fact that their identity is commercially valuable that makes their politics relevant. Whilst Braidotti might argue that genderqueer models have their ‘otherness’ commodified, this argument could be extended to consider that when a subject has increased agency in the conditions of their representation, when their performance of self and image are the product being sold, and when they centre the very
‘otherness’ that is being commodified into their embodied, commercial practice, these subjects are consumed along with their latent political and social discourses, which are thus incrementally ingested by consumers. Genderqueer fashion models may visually satisfy an aesthetic and social shift adopted by the fashion industry, but their politicised practices are disrupting the aesthetic intelligibility of heteronormative gender perpetuated in fashion and visual culture.
Therefore I argue that Pejić, Legler, Nef and Khan are both “maker[s] as well as … marker[s] of” (Roberts 1993, 665) the broader social shift
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towards gender diversity through the cultural mediation they perform for consumers.
Contribution to Knowledge
This project extends the existing literature and contributes to gaps in knowledge in several ways.
First and foremost, this project has mapped a cultural phenomenon that is undocumented in academia. While fashion models have been the subject of numerous academic studies, these studies have historically been conducted on cisgendered models who work distinctly in womenswear or menswear. Further to this, all previous theorisations of fashion models are limited by taken-for-granted references to heteronormative definitions and binary gendered functions. By documenting the phenomenon, this research has not only formalised a study of genderqueer fashion models, but has contended that they extend the fashion model’s function as cultural intermediary in the specific cultural mediation of contemporary gender identity issues. The issues and concepts represented and mediated by genderqueer models mainstream some key concepts from gender discourse, and their visibility and success mainstream genderqueer and transgender identities.
Second, this project extends on Entwistle and Wissinger’s literature defining the fashion model as a cultural intermediary. Indeed, the authors work defines the ways in which the fashion model fits the
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definition of ‘cultural intermediary’ according to Bourdieu’s conceptual definition of the term, although this scholarship describes the fashion model’s mediation as one of fashionability and beauty ideals. While this is certainly upheld by genderqueer fashion models, it so happens that their specific political message is inextricable from ideas of fashionability and beauty—hence, their inherent capacity to communicate to their audiences about these topics also renders them capable of mediating ideas about gender identity. Beauty, gender and fashion are deeply interconnected. While other fashion models may seek to use their platform to expose a political message, these efforts are viewed as separate to their work as models. Conversely, genderqueer fashion models mediate ideas about gender through their bodily practice as fashion models making their aesthetic labour a political labour.
As demonstrated in each case study, genderqueer fashion models mediate ideas of gender while adding cultural and political value to the wider social debate in two specific ways: first, they mediate a challenge to heteronormative gender by actively troubling gender in their fashion- modelling work; second, they explicitly convey their ideas of gender by exposing their message through the media coverage afforded them as visible figures in fashion and visual culture.
This extension to Entwistle and Wissinger’s work further defines a specific category of fashion model and articulates the nuances of their mediation in terms of gender. This research in turn reframes the fashion
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model as having real capacity to mediate social agendas in visual culture.
More broadly, while this research identifies fashion models as potential mediators of social agendas, additional implications are that fashion as an industry has significant capacity for mediating social issues in a highly mainstream forum, as multiple points of cultural intermediation besides fashion models exist within the networks of fashion. This speaks to fashion’s power over public political discourse, as opposed to simply the politics of the individual.
Conclusion
In concluding this project, it is pertinent to cite the words of IMG
Model agent Ivan Bart (quoted in BoF 2016), as spoken as part of a
Business of Fashion panel alongside Hari Nef, Jordan Dunn and Tim
Banks:
through diversity and through the imagery of fashion we can create social change, because when that young person is sitting at home reading Vogue, Glamour or whatever magazine, and they’re fantasising and they see themselves—they see Hari, they see Joan, they see age, China Michado and Lauren Hutton, and they see diversity, there is a sense that “I belong”.
Nef (quoted in BoF 2016) reiterates this idealistic sentiment, arguing that in a post-Trump political climate, where hard-won rights are being rescinded, fashion can send a different message. Although she acknowledges that it sounds idealistic, and that not all representation is good representation, if fashion publications work with the communities they are representing, they have the capacity to send extremely
Discussion and Conclusion 307
powerful messages to a luxury consumer base who is waiting to be told
“who is ok”.
This idealistic view of genderqueer fashion models’ capacity to reframe marginalised identities into culturally valued political identities can also be explained with reference to two considerations of the value of fashion photography beyond its commercial function. Hartley and
Rennie (2004, 477) argue that fashion photography “documents contemporary life and teaches some important truths”, and makes a
“distinctive contribution to the public articulation of these uncertainties and their consequences as they apply to individual identity and experience” (462). Similarly, Jeremy Gilbert-Rolfe (1995, 258) argues that the fashion photograph is transgressive by virtue of “testing limits and the present”. If genderqueer fashion models populate images in mainstream fashion media and broader visual culture, then the visibility of their identities, which become culturally validated by virtue of their role as cultural intermediaries, will increasingly transgress the limits of the present and contribute to the public articulation of emerging definitions of gender. Perhaps even more significantly, one might argue that a fashion model’s entire visibility provides tangible instances of culture ‘thinking through’ ideas of gender and reframing queer identities as culturally valuable and validated.
Future research This project and its findings point to several further gaps in knowledge and potential avenues for future research.
Discussion and Conclusion 308
First, as demonstrated in the analysis sections of the case studies chapters, analysing fashion imagery and media content via concepts of heteronormative gender is becoming increasingly difficult. As gender lines are blurred via both the aesthetics of models and the ways in which fashion is produced and disseminated, a new discourse of post-gender language and approaches is required. Future research stemming from this project is to design a framework for discussing, understanding and analysing fashion content in a post-gender era.
Second, as this project’s main goal was to map and document the phenomenon of genderqueer fashion models as a cultural phenomenon, its case study approach called for the review and analysis of only existing data. The fashion diversity report by The Fashion Spot (2018) categorises gender-diverse models as transgender or nonbinary, whereas this project contends that a more appropriate categorisation would be
‘genderqueer’ to express all nonheteronormative, nonbinary, gender- nonconforming and noncisgender identities. Further to this, the report only looks at a limited set of shows within a specific timeframe, offering a snapshot of diversity in fashion. This project makes clear the need for more extensive quantitative research, not just across fashion runways, but in fashion media more broadly. This kind of quantitative research could be used to hold the industry more accountable beyond the runways to push for better parity of representation across identity categories.
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Finally, as genderqueer fashion models have been identified as cultural intermediaries who mediate contemporary ideas of gender identity, this project then raises the question: in what other discourses are new, diverse fashion models capable of mediation via their position as cultural intermediary within fashion and visual culture? As discussed earlier in this chapter, racial diversity remains the most significant issue of diversity in fashion model representations, and research on how increasingly culturally diverse fashion models are changing the industry would be a worthwhile avenue of inquiry. Similarly, as progress occurs across fashion and mainstream media in all notions of diversity, including size, age and ability, this research framework could be applied to fashion models and cultural figures becoming increasingly prominent as voices representing specific concerns.
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Appendices
Appendix A:
“The right face at the right time” i-D online 2014, photographed by
Daniel Jackson, stylist Alistair McKimm
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Appendix B:
“Chanel” editorial in Exit Magazine Fall/Winter 2015, photographed by
Santiago and Mauricio Sierra, fashion editor and stylist Michaela
Dosamantes
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Appendix C:
Hari Nef and Andres Velencoso in “Honeymoon”, CANDY Magazine
January 2017,photographed by Sebastian Faena, fashion editor and
stylist Sofia Achaval
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