harry styles in a dress is so much more than harry styles in a dress.
harry styles in a dress is so much more than harry styles in a dress.
Gen Z is taking on toxic masculinity — and winning — whether conservatives like it or not.
When I first stumbled on one of the biggest pop culture micro-controversies of this past week — that a right-wing commentator was up in arms over pop star Harry Styles donning a dress on the cover of the latest issue of Vogue — I couldn’t believe it. Of course, I wasn’t shocked by the commentator whom I won’t name had an idiotic take. What did surprise me, however, was how much attention her comments received.
I first saw the comments screenshot in a series of stories shared by Deuxmoi, the buzzy, tabloid-y celebrity gossip account that seemingly every major news outlet in North America just discovered over the past week. I wondered why this account would choose to amplify this hateful take to its 427,000+ followers, why anyone — including the dozen of publications that proceeded to pick up the story and the many verified Twitter users that dunked on the commentator’s tweets defending her rant — would even bother giving this oxygen.
Frankly, besides the fact that Styles has become the first man to appear alone on Vogue’s cover in its 128-year history, a prominent man wearing a dress in a fashion photo shoot should be a non-story in the year 2020. While Styles is one of the most frequently-cited famous men who are pushing back on gender norms, he is just one example of what feels like a fiercely turning tide.
In Styles’ interview accompanying the cover shoot, he tells Vogue that he sees his experimentation with fashion as continuing the legacy of names like Prince, Bowie, Elvis, Freddie and Elton, all of whom brought a certain amount of flamboyance both to the stage and to their lives. And he describes the feeling of putting on clothes you feel amazing in as “like a superhero outfit.” He continues:
Clothes are there to have fun with and experiment with and play with. What’s really exciting is that all of these lines are just kind of crumbling away. When you take away ‘There’s clothes for men and there’s clothes for women,’ once you remove any barriers, obviously you open up the arena in which you can play. … I’ve never really thought too much about what it means—it just becomes this extended part of creating something.
I relate a lot to what Styles is saying here, especially the “superhero outfit” part. Although I’m almost a decade older than the 26-year-old Styles, I’m constantly exploring how I present myself to the world. Over the years, I’ve cycled through many eras — from grandpa pants-and-band-shirts in high school to all-black-everything. No matter what my uniform of the moment has been, over time it’s always served the role of an armor of sorts, the shorthand of a uniform to take on the daily stressors and anxieties of moving through the world as a visibly queer person.
Lately, I’m finding myself mixing looser, skater-inspired streetwear fits with my standard-issue goth vibes. Over the course of this quarantine era I’ve also been wearing nail polish and a minimum of five or six rings and one or two necklaces pretty much constantly. On the rare occasions where I’m not heavily accessorized and my nails are naked, I feel over-exposed, like an imposter almost.
If there’s one positive to emerge from these days of “work from home forever,” I hope it’s that more people have taken time for introspection, to explore their priorities in life and their identities as well. Among other things, this time of isolation has made me feel more in touch with my queerness than perhaps I ever have, and freshly shellacking my nails in OPI’s black onyx polish every two weeks provides a visual reminder of that. Every time I look down at my hands, I see something that I did entirely for myself and I can feel newly grounded. And on a more superficial level, I just love the way it looks, and 2020 feels like a good a time as any to find pockets of happiness and resilience wherever we can.
That little splash of paint also brings me back to a time where I wouldn’t have felt as comfortable wearing nail polish. I remember years ago when my older brother donned a couple of nails painted a glittering silver just like Bulls star Dennis Rodman was wearing at the time. When I went to do the same thing, I was told by my parents to remove it immediately. (I guess it was only cool if it was in homage to an athlete?)
Regardless, I’ve always remained intrigued by nail polish. Years later, I started to wear it on and off, especially at music festivals, concerts, DJ gigs and to parties. But I’d always remove it before returning to the office and felt a bit uncomfortable wearing it most of the time. Now, I’m not so sure I’ll be removing it anytime soon — unless I’m applying a fresh coat or trying a different color immediately after. And with each re-application comes a renewed burst of pride.
I get the sense that a lot of male-identified folks are experiencing a similar sensation right now, and the wheels were set in motion even prior to the spread of COVID-19. Publications like GQ, Esquire and the Wall Street Journal have all dug into the topic, giving celebrities like Styles, A$AP Rocky, Bad Bunny, Billy Porter and Lil Nas X credit for helping to popularize what Esquire called “the year of the menicure.”
Zooming out further, fem-adjacent trends like “e-boys” and “femboys” are all over TikTok as boys — queer, straight and everything in between — are swimming in likes while also trying out women’s clothing and makeup. On Luca Guadagnino’s exuberant HBO series We Are Who We Are, actor Jack Dylan Grazer plays a character named Fraser who himself is in the midst of defining his identity and exploring his gender expression while on an Army base in Italy. In an interview with GQ, Grazer said his character’s exploration of identity has run in parallel to a similar journey he is also right in the thick of:
I think every single person born as a boy has this guard. It’s this guard that they don’t even realize they have, where they’re initially like, ‘Being gay? I could never.’ But we’re all born as humans who are attracted to whatever we’re attracted to. I think that’s how Fraser interprets it as well.
This younger generation’s attitude toward traditional gender expressions has been really refreshing to witness, and I do think that Styles and many of the names mentioned above, as well as a long lineage of trans-identified individuals who have been on the frontlines of this battle for decades, deserve a lot of credit for helping to usher in this era of nonconformity. At the end of the day, a world where we are all able to express ourselves authentically without fear of reprisal is a better world, and any and all steps toward that reality deserve our praise.
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This is normally the part of the post where I share a mix of links, worthy causes worth donating to and songs I’m listening to, but I’m going to be real here: This sloppy attempt by the Trump administration and the GOP at a coup and the incredibly high number of people who are still going about their holiday planning as though there isn’t a rapidly surgely pandemic going on has left me exhausted.
So, instead: Please donate to a food bank if you can. Food banks have seen a huge increase in demand this year, and that’s especially true heading into the holidays as some organizations are reporting the double the demand that they saw last year ahead of the Thanksgiving holiday.
And until next week, a song: “Lifetime” by Romy (whose voice you might recognize as one-third of the British indie pop band the xx).