Andrej Pejic cover censored by Barnes & Noble, Borders, say reports

(CBS) - Retail giants Barnes & Noble and Borders are refusing to display the latest cover of fashion magazine Dossier Journal, because it features androgynous male model Andrej Pejic shirtless, according to reports.

Elle Magazine writes that bookstores have asked for all copies of the magazine to be censored, placed in opaque plastic bags, because Pejic looks "too much like a woman."

Dossier Co-Founder and Creative Director Skye Parrott spoke with the online publication saying 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."

Parrott believes censoring the cover will limit sales, but more than that "it probably made people uncomfortable."

Parrott told the site, "But that's part of what's interesting about the cover, I think, is that it's playing with those ideas of gender roles." According to Elle Magazine, the publisher will have to cover the cost of the plastic bags.