Harry Styles Style Causes Controversy

This may sound familiar to you. You casually scroll down on Twitter, nothing unusual, except for….what?! Is this Harry Styles on a Vogue cover?! And is that Candace Owens responding to it?! Oh, wait! Is this Frodo Baggins? If you are familiar with this event that’s great. If you never heard about this but you are dying to find out why on earth a political figure and a celebrity in the entertainment industry have gotten into a heated back and forth and what on earth Frodo Baggins has to do with this, keep reading because here’s what happened.

The event which sparked this conflict was a release of the December 2020 Vogue Issue which was announced with a tweet by Vogue featuring Harry Styles, an English singer, songwriter, and actor, wearing a dress designed by Gucci on their cover. This event was a historical first of a solo man featured on the cover of American Vogue.

Candace Owens, an American conservative author, commentator, and political activist, responded to Vogue’s tweet saying, “There is no society that can survive without strong men. The East knows this. In the west, the steady feminization of our men at the same time that Marxism is being taught to our children is not a coincidence. It is an outright attack. Bring back manly men.” Owens’ comment caused a domino effect of other celebrities responding to her criticism. Some of those celebrities include Elijah Wood, Jameela Jamil, and Miley Cyrus. Elijah Wood, mainly known for his role as Frodo Baggins in the Lord of the Rings movies, responded with the following, “Masculinity alone does not make a man, in fact, it’s got nothing to do with it.” Jamila Jameel, a British actress, radio presenter, model, writer, and activist responded to Owens saying, “Harry Styles is plenty manly, because manly is whatever you want it to be, not what some insecure, toxic, woman-hating, homophobic [redacted] decided it was hundreds of years ago. He’s 104% perfect.” After more retweets, celebrity comments, and Twitter conversations, Harry Styles himself responded to Owens with an Instagram post featuring a photo of him in a powder blue suit with pleated cuffs, over a white frilled shirt while eating a banana. Style’s Instagram post was captioned with “Bring back manly men.” which was the ending sentence of Owens’ original comment. To this Owens responded, “When people try to tell me I don’t have influence, and then @Harry_Styles dedicates an entire post to my tweet. I inspire global conversation.“
The Twitter exchange did, in fact, inspire a global conversation. Should people wear clothes that conform to their genders? Should what is currently considered the female fashion industry be limited to women? Why do we dress the way we do? Is the fear of judgment from others one of the reasons? These were some of the questions that followed. We interviewed students at Panther Creek to seek answers and here are some of the responses we received: “If you think you look good and are confident then wear whatever you want to wear.”
“I think he [Styles] and the magazine have the right to do what they want, but I find it inappropriate and against my religious beliefs.”
“No, the fashion industry should not only be for women though it doesn’t seem that huge a deal. Men have fashion already anyway with suits and ties and men can wear dresses as they please as Harry Styles has proven for better or for worse.”
“I think Harry Styles was sending a message about not limiting yourself based on specific gender norms or what is considered “male” or “female”. He stated in his vogue interview that ‘to not wear (something) because it’s females’ clothing, you shut out a whole world of great clothes.’”
“I generally like Candace Owens, and I stand by her tweet. She is free to say that and he is free to do what he did.”
“I think she [Owens] was being completely and utterly rude for no reason.”
We have also conducted a poll to find out how the Panther Creek population generally feels about this issue. According to the poll, the vast majority believes that the fashion industry is not solely meant for women, people should not be limited to clothing that fits their gender stereotype, and that judgment is a reason why people restrain from expressing themselves. Interestingly we also found out that female students in Panther Creek generally claim that they would feel comfortable wearing a tuxedo while boys tended to claim that they would feel uncomfortable wearing a dress or a skirt.

In short, Owens and Styles sparked a controversial discussion across socialmedia platforms, schools and homes. While many disagree on the answers to those controversial questions, we can all agree that the fashion industry keeps changing and it will continue to do so, bringing more controversial topics to our future conversations.

Poll results conducted by Josh Willis