Gender Bender: This is how far models will go for a job.

I often wonder why anyone would want to become a model anymore.

You only have to watch one cycle of Next Top Model to see how a faux pas like not wanting to be in a tank full of snakes can send girls teetering on the brink spiralling down a black hole of self-loathing.

We often hear about the extreme measures models inflict on themselves to stay thin (and to continue to get work) like eating tissues or existing on just one piece of sushi a day or the more traditional black coffee and cigarettes and gruelling twice daily workouts regime, and there are continued reports that the highest paid fashion photographer is an alleged sex offender.

And now cutting off all your hair, strapping your boobs down and dressing like a man in order to get work over the age of  25 is a legitimate career move.

In a piece for the New York Post, 31-year-old model Elliot Sailors details how she decided to reinvent herself as a male model.

“I’m starting over to have a longer career,” Sailors told The Post. “Men don’t need to look as young as possible, so I have a lot of time.”

Sailors came up with the idea not from successful androgynous models like Andrej Pejic or Casey Legler already working in the industry but from an epiphany she had while attending a Landmark self-help seminar.

“[I] got connected to what I wanted to create: an opportunity to design not just my career, but my life.”

Taking advantage of her “strong jaw, wide forehead, huge eyebrows” that frustrated her early in her career, Sailors (after much consideration) went to the barber’s shop and asked for a buzz cut.

For the record Sailors is married, and her husband is supportive about her change.

“He said he knew people would see me differently once I did it, but he didn’t realise how much people would see him differently,” Sailors said, explaining that think that many think they’re a gay couple.

Sailors dresses like a man on most days because it’s easier than wearing make up or heels. When she shows up for a casting call now, she shows up in flannel, jeans, boots and a biker jacket.

Fashion has long celebrated androgyny but it’ll be interesting to see if this gender-bending will make it easier for transgender models and other diverse groups, like plus-size and models of different ethnicity, to gain work.