Independent Perspective News

They pretend, provoke, confuse. Boys who seem girls, girls who seem boys... or all of it at the same time. They are a world wide fashion, is it time for the third sex?

It's not only about boyish girls or effeminate boys. It's not only about trasvestis either. A sexual revolution? A trend? They like wearing clothes that don't give any clues about their gender and that exploit their most confusing traits to the maximum. They're ambiguous, they're not boys, they're not girls: they're both. Or neither.

Mythology and history are on their side: the Greeks used to speak about the androgynes as ideal beings who had both sexes and who were split into men and women by Zeus, as a punishment for being vain.

They might be those girls with short hair, a tight shirt and a little tie who go to the Brandon parties, or those boys wearing eyeliner, nail polish and platforms who go dancing to @lternativ@ or Requiem. Or the mod men with mushroom hair and waisted jackets. Or the biker girls with loose trousers or the skater girls with rough movements and knee guards. An emblematic case is Leigh Bowery, the obese English artist / performer of the 80s: his work was going to the discos wearing tons of make-up, a corset and his multisex look.

The paradigms of sensuality and femininity shake every time a new supermodel, skinny as Belgian Elise Crombez (Vogue Italy cover in March) or as straight as Liberty Ross (Kate Moss' heir). Is it universal that a busty blonde is sexier than a bold lean girl?

It suffices to browse through the latest fashion magazines Nylon or The Face: boys look refined and wear lots of make-up, girls are angular and pose uninterested as if there weren't models. The brand Miu Miu is using for its new campaign to boys? girls? in black and white, hugging and looking into the camera. And the new male models for Prada are like sexless little angels with feminine lips, masculine jaw and a tender look in their eyes.

Here in Argentina, if you look at the street posters you'll find Juan Donato's perverse gesture, the new model for Ona Sáez's campaign who looks like a girl without tits. Or the image of the fake Kosiuko party where models, DJs and mini-celebrities posed with Christ and Serialkilla, the two androgynous protagonists of this article. They, night owls, more sexually than aesthetically defined, shoot: "Sexless people are more erotic". They prefer to define themselves as the third sex. Y they challenge: "Why look like a boy or a girl when you can look like both at the same time or, even better, neither?"