▼ Music Wild About Harry Some have accused Harry Styles of embracing gender- bending fashion as a form of “queer-baiting.” BY EVA RAGGIO I n what seemed like a couple of quick years, Harry Styles grew from a boy- bander who was blander than unsalted crackers into an absolute HSILF: A Harry Styles we’d like to fuck. We’ve long forgotten his time as a teen idol fresh off The X-Factor, singing with four other English clones about a girl who doesn’t know she’s beautiful, keeping alive a horrible male tradition of celebrating wom- en’s looks while demanding our self-esteem be low enough we’re unable to assess our- selves as good-looking. Then he dated Taylor Swift and became a bit of a pop-culture villain, the benign bad boy in a high school movie who’d make you mad but wouldn’t wreck you. Then he dated Kendall Jenner, crushing the hopes of smart women everywhere. One day, Styles went solo and started re- leasing music such as the unexpectedly un- commercial, epic ballad “Sign of the Times” and cultivating a distinctly playful personal style. One day, while we’d been distracted looking at Thor’s arms, Harry Styles became hot. Harry Fever spread from one crotch to another like an STD at spring break. It doesn’t help that Styles is starring in the upcoming Don’t Worry, Darling, directed by his girlfriend Olivia Wilde, and that the press surrounding the movie keeps reminding us it has sex scenes starring Harry Styles. As dating apps repeatedly demonstrate, most straight men strongly believe that women are looking for a man who is shirt- less at the gym or can be found at most times holding a large gun or fish. Freudian as those associations might be, they are the last two things we’d ever want near our private areas. These are the guys who refer to themselves without any irony as “alpha males.” As Styles’ sex appeal goes global, he’s rip- ping the pages of the old playbook and smoking them away, rewriting entirely the description of what we thought we wanted. He’s not an alpha or a beta male but in an al- phabet of his own. A few years ago, Styles started wearing “women’s” clothes. And not in a Ziggy Stardust, silk and glitter, slutty and androgynous way, but more like the way your toddler niece plays dress-up. With clown-like joy and sparkly jumpsuits and major stripes and multi-colored nail polish. Sometimes he looks like he’s been shopping Vera Velma Hernandez at Justice with JoJo Siwa. And that makes it even better somehow. His style feels unpretentious and spontane- ous, just like his festive onstage presence. Styles wears necklaces with big beads suit- able for a cartoon mom and Vermeer-type pearl earrings, frilly dresses and matching hair bows. It’s like he’s just discovered these things and sees them without the lens of any gender associations or societal context, as if they caught his eye while strolling through London’s Portobello Road and he picked them because they looked fun. Harry Styles is hot, but not ripped. Neither is he the kind of soft boy — the sensitive guy who’ll rip your heart out but join you at a feminist rally — we’ve come to expect thanks to many an Ethan Hawke character. For an artist, he’s not all that poetic or aspirational. He doesn’t brood, but radiates sunshine. At least so far, his music isn’t especially noteworthy and certainly not revolutionary. His biggest hits, “Watermelon Sugar,” “Adore You” and “As It Was” are perfectly adequate pop productions, radio-specific Velcro meant to stick in the yearlong’s charts, repetitive enough to annoy listeners into submission, drilling into our memories until we eventually accept they have a place. We also haven’t seen Harry in the role of great romancer, a love-bomber like Pete Da- vidson, the kind who’ll get your name tat- tooed after the first date then probably dump you because YOU are just too good for him. We’re not so sure what it is about Harry Styles that makes him so magnetic. He looks a bit like a garden gnome and, yeah, some- times he dresses like he was styled by the Disney Channel’s wardrobe department. But Styles is attractive the way adult Simba was attractive in The Lion King. Whether we know why or not, he just is. Last Monday, Rolling Stone made Styles the publication’s first global cover star, put- ting him on the front of all 14 editions of the magazine, from Argentina to Korea, and call- ing him “The World’s Most Wanted Man.” In Dallas, a Harry Styles pop-up in May celebrating the release of his album Harry’s House attracted a crowd that wrapped around several blocks. May. Dallas. What- ever temperature it was that day, Harry Styles was hotter. Harry Styles is hotter than the body heat trapped between Lisa Bonet and Jason Mo- moa during their first post-marital lay. He is so hot that he IS the sweat between Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt at the height of their breeding kink. He is hotter than the bed sheets that never stood a chance during Pam and Tom- my’s honeymoon. He is hotter than the inch of green fabric barely holding J.Lo’s Versace dress together. Harry Styles is also responsibly hot. He is the pop star we need in hyper-aware, post- MeToo times. He’s got that eye twinkle that promises trouble, but only as much of it as you’ve consented to soberly beforehand. He’s got that charmingly confident cheeki- ness, and a perpetual smirk more loaded than the Mona Lisa’s. He’s got that face that says he’s shy-crushing on you, but he’s also fine being friends. That you can tell him your feelings and he’ll respect them. That he’ll fuck you respectfully. Mick Jagger recently shunned the years- long comparisons made by the public and media between him and Styles, and he’s right. Styles will never have the filthy rock star appeal of a legend such as Jagger. While Jagger’s party days had a heroin-heavy South of France chic, Styles is the kid at the birthday party relishing in the simple de- light of cake and balloons. Styles isn’t trying to get you pregnant. He wants to take off your clothes and wear them himself. He’s less Studio 54 and more Forever 21. He’s a rare TikTok-approved hero. He will absolutely ruin your lips but then fix them be- cause he carries his own lip gloss. And it’s better than yours. It’s Pat McGrath. Not everyone is down with Styles’ god- of-sex-and-cheer brand and androgynous fashion. Some have accused the star of em- bracing gender-bending fashion as a form of “queer-baiting.” Queer-baiting would neces- sitate that Styles not be queer, which we don’t exactly know. Those accusing him of deliberately playing up a sexually ambigu- ous image say he’s certainly presenting as straight because he’s only publicly dated women. Styles responded to the accusations by saying he’s never “publicly dated anyone,” avoiding the point entirely, which is such a Harry Styles’ flamboyance has some questioning his motives. Harry Styles thing to do: keep it cute, keep it light. He’s never gone Instagram official or made any public love declarations, but it’s not like anyone burst into his room and secretly filmed him banging famous women. He’s publicly been seen on dates with women who also happen to be public figures. Queer-baiting, the act of creating the ap- pearance or even “suggestion” of being queer by a person who is not — a trend soundtracked by Katy Perry’s “I Kissed a Girl” — can certainly be an industry move to target LGBTQ fans by using queerness as a commodity. And they don’t wish to be the meat in the focus groups of predatory music industry marketing. If Styles has been instructed to appear sexually ambiguous, adventurous or curi- ous, we wouldn’t know. In reference to an upcoming film in which he plays a gay character, Styles told Rolling Stone, “I think everyone, including myself, has your own journey with figuring out sexu- ality and getting more comfortable with it.” Whatever reasons he may have, the singer has a right to keep his orientation pri- vate without publicly detailing his exact po- sition on the Kinsey scale. And he has a right to keep wearing what- ever he wants. As we increasingly demand that men shun a long-held culture of toxic masculin- ity, we can’t in the same breath shame a man, a stage performer nonetheless, for wearing pieces of fabric whose constructions are deemed as “feminine.” This type of reason- ing also irresponsibly hammers home the idea that clothing is an acceptable means of expression only as long as the wearer isn’t perceived as using it to cock-tease others. Calling Styles out for his outfits seems like a perpetuation of the message that kids and anyone else wanting to stretch the bounds of fashion had better stick to the clothing recently assigned to their gender and be extra mindful of not putting out “queer energy” in case they send the “wrong” impression. Harry Styles may or may not be queer- baiting, and only he knows what he’s into, or maybe he doesn’t. So far he appears as a per- former who inhabits a world much like that of Schitt’s Creek, one protected from ho- mophobia or inhumane politics or arbitrary fashion rules. These days as we all show ourselves in public at our absolute worst, if a dude danc- ing around dressed like Minnie Mouse makes you feel some type of way, maybe it’s because he’s just that hot. Harry Styles is hotter than the sexual ten- sion Ryan Gosling projects when he looks at any woman in any scene in any of his mov- ies. Harry Styles is hotter than the memories of the bath’s faucet in the apartment where Ewan McGregor and Jude Law once lived together as roommates. He’s hotter than the miniscule Swarovski crystals sewn onto Ri- hanna’s see-through dress. Harry Styles is almost, almost as hot as Zendaya. If you find Harry Styles fuckable, it’s be- cause he is. Let’s not slut-shame him through his fashion choices. Instead, let us just admit that the only rea- son we want to know his exact orientation is to better calculate the mathematical proba- bility of ever getting to bang Harry Styles. 17 1 dallasobserver.comdallasobserver.com | CONTENTS | UNFAIR PARK | SCHUT |ZE | FEATURE | NIGHT+DAY | CULTURE | MOVIES | DISH | MUSIC | CLASSIFIED | CLASSIFIED | MUSIC DISH | CULTURE | UNFAIR PARK | CONTENTS DALLAS OBSERVER S OBSER MONTH XX–MONTH XX, 2014 SEPTEMBER 1–7, 2022
