As if by a cruel hand of fate, the minute I uploaded my last blog post, I got ill. Again. Bed ridden with the most disgusting chest infection, going to the gym was not high my list of priorities. As I coughed and spluttered my way through the week I was only too aware of how my birthday goal was slipping through my fingers.

But, birthday goal aside, (I still have one week to hit it hard at the gym) something did grab my attention during my week in bed. Andrej Pejic. For those who haven’t heard about, or perhaps more importantly seen him, Andrej is the male fashion model who has been hitting the runway in women’s clothes.

The importance of this new catwalk phenomenon is not that it’s quirky or groundbreaking but where the does this leave women? Since the early 90s, women on the catwalk have been getting thinner and thinner. ‘Normal’ women have been forced to look and aspire to such unachievable goals as heroin chic (thanks Jodie Kidd) or size 0 (ditto Victoria Beckham). But now that’s not even enough. You must aspire to, quite literally, look like a man. Or should that be boy. A skinny, boob-less, hip-less and definitely womb-less, boy.

Paris Fashion Week was more than surprised when it turned out the model wearing a Jean Paul Gaultier wedding dress was indeed Andrej and after liking the dress so much, Rihanna wore the very same one to the Grammy’s. This resulted in a plethora or ‘who wore it best’ competitions in the fashion media.

Enraged doesn’t seem to fit how angry I felt. “How can you compare a woman and a man wearing the same thing?” my rage filled thoughts spluttered. “They are anatomically different, blah, blah, unhealthy representations of women, blah, blah, too much rage to form coherent sentences, blah, blah, blah”. And then I came to the user comments.

I have little faith in the general public at the best of times, but this is never lower than when reading user comments on websites. Underneath the Daily Mail reporting of this story online (I know, I know, what did I expect?) a woman had said, “Well, I think he looks way more feminine in [that dress] than Rihanna”. Bang. That was my brain finally exploding with rage.

If this is what I have to aspire to now, a six foot, ugly, lanky man, should I just give up on my quest to get a bum like Beyonce’s, thighs like Rihanna’s or a stomach like Shakira’s? Should I stop eating altogether and lose so much weight through anorexia that my periods stop to be more like a man? Is the fashion world really that disgusted by anything that might resemble a woman that I should stop wearing clothes and resort to wearing a sack with a printed warning saying ‘don’t feed the female’?

Rage aside, I can take solace in the fact that there will come a time when Andrej can no longer fight his male genes. His luscious, blonde hairline will start to recede and his beer gut will start to show. He will find himself inexplicably dancing like a dad, liking Top Gear and talking about problems with his prostate. But until that day, I can only pray that he shimmies down the catwalk in a pair of tiny designer knickers, unaware that a big, hairy, ball-shaped, elephant in the room is bringing his career to a crashing halt. Who's the feminine one now Andrej…?

Follow me on Twitter @steviecooke1985

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