Boy wonder model Andrej Pejic appears in his latest fashion triumps, lensed by Moo King for Fashion Canada’s February 2012 issue. Styled by George Antonopoulos, Andrej has plenty of smart quips about being the future mistress of the suburban manor.

Let me say that I’m hearing new rumblings about Andrej, who really does cross dress as a woman, period. Being gender fluid is pretty cool, but I haven’t seen Andrej seriously dolled up like a guy very often. Androgyny is hot but Andrej is a babe most of the time and just may get caught in some ‘real woman’ crossfire one of these days.

Twitter is having fits tis morning that the BBC couldn’t find 12 ‘real women’ to honor as their faces of the year, so they called in a panda.  Labour MP Stella Creasy tweeted: “No offence to Sweetie — sure a lovely panda and best in the class etc — but clue is in the title ‘women’ not ‘female of the species’ of the year.”

Fashion Canada is no edgy fashion publication. With all due respect, Andrej is no supermodel, as advertised in the verbiage. That fashion industry victory lap is still ahead of him.

I found myself in some pretty interesting dialogue with a reader over last February’s Amanda Platell Says Some Fashion Designers Are Misogynistic.  Her thoughts will morph into a new piece, one that has little to do with Andrej specifically — although I found myself on the defensive extolling his talents.

The notion of ‘real woman’ is surging all around me in what is one of the most politically-incorrect to discuss topics of our time: What is a woman?  Not having a Ph.D in gender studies, I’ve already been blasted to kingdom come for confusing sex and gender.

I’m pretty sure that Andrej is a woman if he says so or wants to be, according to these scholars. Woman is a social, cultural construct of some kind. So I’ll be studying my terminology carefully since I clearly don’t know what a female is or a woman or a she or …  But mark my words, there are growing numbers of people who think they are women processing this new fashion dictate that the best person for the modeling job is  … whatever. I know; I know … women can’t handle a joke. We have no sense of humor.

As a second wave feminist, I don’t take any of these rumblings very seriously any more. Women are putty in the hands of people who tell us what we need to be and we march in step just like the women of the fifties. Today we march to marketers, brands and fashion designers, in the fifties it was hsubands. But as a studier of the cultural landscape, I will say that the teakettle is doing a slow boil on the stove.

To be continued …  Anne