It’s tough being a professional model in such a competitive industry, especially when you are passed your prime, but it’s always good to remember that when a door closes, a window opens. Take Elliott Sailors, for example. She used to grace Bacardi billboards around the world with her beautiful blond locks, but at 31, she struggled to find any decent giggs. So she chopped off her hair, wrapped her breasts tightly and reinvented herself as a sexy androgynous male model.
Inspired by Casey Legler, a fellow colleague at the prestigious Ford modelling agency and the first woman to exclusively model menswear, Sailors cut her hair into a modern masculine style, hid her curves as best she could and started posing in front of the camera as a man, in an attempt to save her career. She says she didn’t want her modelling career to end so abruptly at only 31, as it often happens with female models who are replaced by younger newcomers. “Men don’t need to look as young as possible, so I have a lot of time,” the woman explains. Her decision to become a male model was not as extreme as it might seem. Back in the day, when she was a beauty pageant contestant, she was insecure with her masculine features. “Earlier on in my career, I would get frustrated because I thought I looked too masculine,” Elliot explains. “I have a strong jaw, wide forehead, huge eyebrows. I thought I looked like a man wearing makeup.” Nowadays, she likes her jawline and other manly features and tries to accentuate them with makeup.
Once a blonde bombshell rocking revealing swimsuits on exotic beaches, Sailors is now almost always in her masculine disguise even when she is not working, as loose outfit are much more comfortable than wearing tight clothing and walking in heels. She regularly posts pictures on her Twitter page in ripped jeans, hoodies and flannels. Moreover, she often references Decatur and Sons barber shop in New York where she gets her signature punk haircut.
Curiously enough, her first name – Elliott, which sounds very masculine, is her mother’s maiden name, so maybe she was predestined to embrace her manly side at one point in her life. Despite many people thinking they are a gay couple, her husband, Adam Santos-Coy, is very supportive of her decision. “He said he knew people would see me differently once I did it, but he didn’t realize how much people would see him differently,” Elliott says. Although she still has an obvious grace and ladylike beauty, some people do mistake her for a genuine man now. “When I’m in an elevator, I notice that they let all of the girls go first — like the real girls,” the woman claims.
In contrast, some equally gorgeous men such as the famous Andrej Pejic and Russian teenager Stanyslas Fedyanin, have been photographed in lacey undergarments and tight dresses.
Source: New York Post
