Styles’s fearlessness “has opened my eyes,” Kazmarek told me. Styles has become a fashion influencer for folks across the gender spectrum, including McCall, who now feels inspired to wear her grandmother’s pearls “without seeming prim and uptight.” Ryan Kazmarek, a Harry devotee and stylist at IGK SoHo in New York, is still mourning the fact that coronavirus thwarted his plan to fly to Styles’s now postponed shows in Manchester, United Kingdom, with his boyfriend, William. Styles’s splendor-in-the-grass moment in Vogue sparked a now infamous backlash from conservative talking head Candace Owens, who whined: “Bring back manly men.” That reaction “is proof that women can be just as sexist and drunk on the patriarchal Kool-Aid as men,” Plank said, adding that the right wing is creating a “moral masculinity panic-this idea that men are under attack by feminism.” Plank credits Styles but also notes that “there’s a courageous pack of masculinity-bending, often LGBTQ or gender-nonbinary men who have been rocking these same looks for decades getting punished for it rather than celebrated for it.” I just think sexuality’s something that’s fun.” Not because it makes me look gay or it makes me look straight or it makes me look bisexual but because I think it looks cool. When The Guardian asked if he’d ever been asked if he is bisexual, Styles replied, “It’s just: Who cares?” He denies he’s “sprinkling in nuggets of sexual ambiguity to try and be more interesting,” as he puts it. The way Styles dresses and the fact that he paints his nails and wears stacked heels beneath his sailor pants continually prompts speculation about sexuality, and I can’t help but notice that this doesn’t trigger him or elicit passionate defenses or assertions that he is not gay. “We still live in a culture that encourages us to protect girls from gendered expectations and stereotypes, but that gets very uncomfortable when we suggest doing the same for boys.” Tyler Mitchell’s Vogue shoot “felt significant because it’s still so rare to see male celebrities challenge conventional ideals of masculinity,” Liz Plank, author of For the Love of Men, told Vogue. What began with his sheer blouse and single drop earring at the 2019 Met Gala flourished in 2020 with a spate of traditionally femme fashion, including fishnets, a signature pearl necklace, and a Gucci dress on the cover of Vogue as the first solo male to ever appear there. In an era of grotesque, Trump-fueled toxic masculinity, the sexiest thing about Styles is that he’s comfortable in his femininity. Styles also strikes me as a man uniquely suited to the moment.
(Please seek out his duet with Lizzo on “Juice” at her Miami show at the Fillmore back in January, another world ago.) But it’s not just that he reads Alain de Botton, writes his own music, wears insane sweaters, and has a cosmic connection with Stevie Nicks. Styles’s beautiful soul is just one reason why I stand by my own budding fandom, even as I’m mocked by certain family members and even my six-year-old daughter for requesting T-shirts from his official store as my only Christmas gift or vaulting myself down the Harry YouTube rabbit hole.