in case there was any doubt that fashion designers want models who look like adolescent boys...

That’s Andrej Pejic, 19 years old, born in Serbia and raised in Australia. Pejic is male.

From Mail Online:

Andrej's delicate features and stylish outfit was the envy of most women and hopefully Playboy boss Hugh Hefner has noticed.

Pejic has been making it known that he aspires to appear in the iconic men's magazine.

He told the Telegraph: 'I would love to do Playboy with Terry Richardson (the photographer). I love Playboy and Terry would be the person to do it.'

And how would Pejic “do Playboy”? Naked, the way women appear in the magazine? Will he shave his crotch so that nothing is hidden from the camera? What will the readers of Playboy think about seeing a man treated like a piece of meat, like a series of disconnected body parts, the way women usually are in the magazine? Will they worry it means they’re gay if they but glance upon a naked man who is pretty?

Ironically, the breast fetish of Playboy is something that is completely at odds with what the fashion industry demands of female models: almost no breasts (or hips), so as not to impede the fall of clothing from the hanger of the shoulders. In that sense, Pejic is the perfect fashion model.

At least designers are starting to acknowledge that they’re not making clothes for the bodies of women.

More Pejic:

Gotta love these last two:

What is Pejic offering us access to in that lefthand image? His cock? That’s the implication, in the same way that images of women in such a pose are offering the (presumed hetero male) viewer access to her sexual parts. What is Pejic demurely hiding in the righthand image? His naked chest, which there is no taboo about revealing? Are these images meant to be parodies of similar images of women? If so, what sort of commentary are they meant to be offering on those visual clichés? That men look just as ridiculous in such poses as women do?

I don’t think that’s it at all, however. Pejic does not read as “male.” The impact of these images is to fool you into thinking you’re looking at a woman, not to make you reconsider whether such images read differently when it’s a man pictured instead of a woman. If that was the intent, the male model would be of a very different physical type.

I’m at a loss to explain Pejic’s success as a model at all. Except as a demonstration that, indeed, fashion -- in fact, the male gaze itself -- holds women in such contempt that a man could easily stand in for them.