Yes, this is Andrej Pejic modeling a push-up bra (that’s beha, in Dutch). In addition to his successes on “both sides” of the runway, Pejic is booking both menswear and womenswear campaigns, and well-paying catalogue jobs. His latest is for Dutch retail chain Hema, modeling their women’s lingerie — including Hema’s “mega push-up bra,” which must have mega properties indeed, because Pejic has no breasts to “push-up.” His Sydney-based agent spoke with Australian fashion blog Frockwriter, saying the ads “[are] revolutionary … I’ve never known a man to do a women’s lingerie campaign before.”
Pejic looks very pretty in the pictures, but of course — and such is the “power” of his androgynous features — he’s likely to be mistaken for a female model by those who don’t know who’s who in modeling right now. However! The shoot is already becoming controversial in the Netherlands, where, realizing this is not a woman, citizens worry the ads will send a negative message to young women on a never-ending quest to get skinnier.
How Pejic came to be working what appears to be a solid B-cup is answered easily enough (gym socks, chicken cutlets, small balloons, etc.), but the question of what message this sends to Hema’s lingerie’s buyers is more awkward — and seems certain to foster a new round of opinion pieces about how lazy (and often, gay male) fashion designers only want to design women’s clothing for boy-ish frames. But is it more problematic for girls with body-image issues to see a male body in ads for women’s lingerie, or on a fake one entirely? And why are these even viable options when, gosh, there are a lot of women out there with undies-campaign-worthy physiques?
