Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez defends Harry Styles’ Vogue cover saying it giver her ‘James Dean vibes’
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (L) defended Harry Styles’ American Vogue cover. (Don Emmert /AFP/Getty/Condé Nast)
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez gave her blessing to Harry Styles’ Vogue cover-shoot, in which he wears a dress, after several right-wing commentators criticised him.
The New York City congressperson, 31, waded into the debate after American political pundits Candace Owens and Ben Shapiro inflated a man wearing a piece of fabric into a hot-button culture war.
“It looks wonderful,” Ocasio-Cortez said in an Instagram story Saturday night (November 21).
AOC weighs in on Harry Styles’s Vogue cover: pic.twitter.com/JJF4Hwbyy8
— Ξvan Ross Katz (@evanrosskatz) November 22, 2020
Harry Styles ‘looks bomb’ in a dress, says Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
“The masculine and feminine elements are balanced beautifully – the hair and jacket styling give me James Dean vibes too.
“Some people are mad at it [because] some folks are very sensitive to examining and exploring gender roles in society.
“Perhaps for some people it provokes some anger or insecurity around masculinity/femininity/etc. If it does, then maybe that’s part of the point.”
Ocasio-Cortez urged those uneasy about the cover to “sit” with themselves and ”
examine, explore, engage and grow with it.”
“What’s the point of creating things if they don’t make people think?” she questioned.
“Or feel or reflect? Especially as an artist or creative? Who wants to see the same thing all the time? And never explore their assumptions?
“Anyways, it looks bomb, so.”
Styles, often one to nudge at gendered clothing boundaries with his blouses and dangly earrings, is certainly in no way the first man to wear a dress, given the sheer myriad of Black and queer people who have done so before and, let’s be honest, even better.
But in becoming the first man to grace American Vogue‘s front pages solo, and to do so in a dress, is nevertheless groundbreaking.
While the cover has been met with a groundswell of support from people, Owens and Shapiro both sought to squash it.
The pair took to Twitter – because where else would we remotely care about what either has to say – to denounce Styles as the apparent enemy number one of masculinity itself for… wearing a Gucci ballgown.
Owens branded Styles wearing the gown as an “outright attack” on western civilisation itself, er, somehow, while cobbling together a few other dog whistles such as “Marxism is being taught in our schools” and “no society […] can survive without strong men”.
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. https://t.co/sY4IJF7VkK— Candace Owens (@RealCandaceO) November 14, 2020
A similar tune was trumpeted by known anti-LGBT+ activist Shapiro, who was similarly intimated of Styles wearing a dress and dubbed it a “referendum on masculinity for men to don floofy dresses”.
This is perfectly obvious. Anyone who pretends that it is not a referendum on masculinity for men to don floofy dresses is treating you as a full-on idiot. https://t.co/cioUNBh4bi— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) November 16, 2020
Shapiro then tweeted several more paragraphs about how “The Left” is out to “feminise masculinity” and used it as an excuse to punch down trans people.
The Left knows this; they openly say that gender is both important and socially constructed (which is why they tell you that a man can be a woman, e.g., despite no biological underpinning).— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) November 16, 2020
The two defenders of toxic masculinity – which studies have suggested is actually harmful to both men’s physical and mental health – quickly became subjects of ridicule on Twitter.
