Critical Reflection: Fashion Knows No Gender

For this piece, Katie Rowles had asked me to write a fashion piece. Fashion is not something that I know much about or am particularly interest in, so I wanted to find an angle for piece that would be interesting for other people who are not really interested in fashion to read as well. I got the idea for this piece after seeing an article on The Independent Online about how transgender model, Andrej Pejic, had been voted into FHMs top 100 sexist women in the world. Until I read this article, transgender modelling was something I did not know much about at all, so I thought it would be interesting to research and inform other people about. 

Finding the background information about transgender modelling, and in particular Pejic and Lea T was not particularly difficult as they have both been featured heavily in the media and the fashion industry. The most difficult thing about this piece was trying to get permission to use pictures of either Pejic or T.

I got in contact with both of their agencies around the world, and the publications their images were featured in from Italian Vogue to The Daily Mail but had absolutely no luck. The best offer I had was that I would be given permission to use the image at the cost of $91 Australian Dollars for every day it was up on line. It became apparent that it was not going to be possible to get permission to use images of either model, and I needed to start thinking outside the box.

I decided to post a status on Facebook asking if anyone knew any transgender models that I would be able to get in touch with to try and attain an image to go with my piece. My efforts paid off and as it turned out that the girl who lives next door to me had a family friend, called Alex Ramsey, who is a transgender model. I contacted Ramsey and explained the situation. He was extremely helpful and gave me permission to pick a photograph off his website to use to go with my piece, as long as I included his name and profession.

He had hundreds of pictures, and I knew I wanted to find one where he looked as feminine as possible. I also needed to choose a photo that would be appropriate to appear with the article, as some of his images were quite risqué. In the end I chose an image of Ramsey dressed as a school girl, and even though he has no hair in the image, his make up, outfit and bone structure made him look like a woman: