“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.”
Vogue’s recent unveiling of their December edition has sparked worldwide controversy over a man in a dress. Dressed in a Gucci dress and jacket, Harry Styles makes history as the first solo male to ever feature on the cover in 127 years. While Styles’ supporters saw creativity and art in the photoshoot, some small-minded thinkers were left appalled and outraged. There’s always one isn’t there?
Harry utilised his historic Vogue cover to get a point across about knocking down the barriers surrounding traditional stereotypes of masculinity and femininity, as well as allowing self-expression through gender neutral fashion.
Let’s go back to the beginning. Men have played with gender stereotypes for years, whether it’s been expressed through makeup or clothes. And this isn’t a new trend, male musicians have been experimenting with gender norms through fashion for decades. We saw it with David Bowie back in the 60s, with his eccentric catsuits and makeup; Prince, the 1980s wearing heavy black eyeliner and frilled blouses, Nirvana bopping around the 90s in dresses. Harry Styles wearing a dress is nothing we haven’t seen before, and it most definitely is not an attack on masculinity.
The only news here is that 21st Century men are now less concerned with how society tells them to dress and are more concerned with wearing whatever they want. And yes this means some men might choose to wear a dress, who cares? Unless they’re robbing it from my own wardrobe I wouldn’t be too fussed. Men are taking the most stereotypically masculine pieces of clothing, and completely tailoring it to their own style through colours, sizing and loud prints.
But of course something slightly out of the norm is going to stir the pot. With certain people expressing their unisolated opinions online. Some believed the purpose of Styles’ shoot was an attempt to “feminise masculinity” and viewed it as a threat to their manhood. Candance Owens, a proud conservative responded to a tweet from Vogue sharing images of Styles.
She wrote “there is no society that can survive without strong men… the steady feminization of our men… It is an outright attack. Bring back manly men.”
If you couldn’t have guessed, this immediately received backlash with millions of fans and celebrities coming to Harry’s defence. Zach Braff took to Twitter to say “our whole lives boys and men are told we need to be manly. Life is short. Be whatever the f**k you want to be.” And summing it up perfectly is director Olivia Wilde, simply responding with “you’re pathetic.”
The idea of masculinity is being reinvented and modernised through fashion, not destroyed. Coming into 2021, let us as a society leave old traditions and gender stereotypes in 2020 and celebrate men and women as they are and how they choose to be. Harry Styles is doing what he wants, wearing what he wants and challenging gender stereotypes while writing some absolute bops.