Shirtless, Androgynous Male Model Banned

Borders is refusing to display the latest issue of fashion magazine Dossier Journal because androgynous male model Andrej Pejic appears shirtless on the cover looking "too much like a woman."

According to Elle Magazine, the bookstore chain has requested that all copies of the magazine be censored and placed in plastic bags. Elle also reported that Dossier will have to cover the cost of bagging the magazines

According to Dossier Co-Founder and Creative Director Skye Parrott, only American bookstores are complaining.

"It's a naked man on the cover of a magazine, which is done all of the time without being covered up, so I definitely don't think it merits this, but I understand what it is," Parrott told The Huffington Post. "It's not a coincidence that it's only the giant U.S. chain stores that are asking us to do this...It's only the American copies that are being censored."

Mary Ellen Keating, a spokeswoman for Barnes & Noble, said that earlier claims that her company was censoring the magazine are completely inaccurate, and that there was no contention between the bookseller and the publishers of the magazine.

"There was absolutely no conflict," she said in an email statement to The Advocate. She added that it was unclear as to how the story was first reported.

Pejic appeared on The Advocate's Forty Under 40 list in May. The 19-year-old model, who has been featured in the French, Italian, and Turkish editions of Vogue, is on the brink of supermodel status.