Harry Styles fires the perfect clapback at homophobes who couldn’t handle him wearing a dress. It involves a banana
Harry Styles. (Vogue/Getty)
Harry Styles clapped back at Candace Owens and every single homophobe who complained about him wearing a dress on the cover of Vogue.
The singer, actor, lesbian icon and all-round unproblematic fave found himself in the crosshairs of right-wing bigots after gracing the front cover of Vogue in a tiered ballgown.
Among them was Trump ally Owens, who labelled the shoot an “outright attack” on western civilisation and cried: “Bring back manly men,” prompting eye-rolls and internal screams worldwide.
Having remained quiet on the matter, a fortnight later Styles has taken to Instagram to share a very simple response.
The Fine Line singer posted a photo of himself on Wednesday (2 December), dressed in a corseted suit jacket atop a sheer, billowing blouse, a banana hanging precociously out of his mouth.
“Bring back manly men,” read the caption.
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Within 40 minutes, the post had already been liked more than 2 million times.
The picture was taken from a Variety spread, in which Styles directly addressed Owen’s remarks.
“To not wear [something] because it’s females’ clothing, you shut out a whole world of great clothes,” he said.
“And I think what’s exciting about right now is you can wear what you like. It doesn’t have to be X or Y. Those lines are becoming more and more blurred.”
Harry Styles ‘is plenty manly’.
After Harry Styles’ Vogue shoot the star was defended by a cavalcade of LGBT+ stars and allies.
Jameela Jamil wrote: “Harry Styles is plenty manly, because manly is whatever you want it to be, not what some insecure, toxic, woman-hating homophobic d**kheads decided it was hundreds of years ago.”
Olivia Wilde responded to Owens with a simple: “You’re pathetic.”
Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said Styles looked “bomb” in a dress.
“Some people are mad at it [because] some folks are very sensitive to examining and exploring gender roles in society,” she added.
“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.”
For his part, Styles has said that he doesn’t place barriers on his style and finds women’s clothes “amazing”.
“Clothes are there to have fun with and experiment with and play with,” Styles told Vogue in an interview which began on noted gay cruising spot Hampstead Heath.
“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.”
Styles’ Vogue issue was reportedly such a success, the magazine has rushed to print a second run.
Elsewhere, when Candace Owens isn’t busy belittling men for wearing dresses, she spends her time suggesting that trans rights activists are being controlled by Satan. And that’s pretty much everything you need to know.
