The British pop star Harry Styles is slim and somewhat androgynous, has lots of tattoos, floppy hair (a US writer calls it "handsome-prince hair"), and an infectious grin. He gives the impression that butter wouldn't melt in his mouth. He is clearly prepared to have fun with his sexuality and masculinity, and has become known for expressing himself adventurously in ways that confound gender norms. A good example of this is the Gucci outfit he wore when he was hosting the 2019 Met Gala (theme: "Camp: Notes on Fashion"): including a gauzy, black, see-through blouse, Cuban heels, and a single, large pearl earring, like a Renaissance rake. He looked extremely pretty, or should that be handsome? Or both?
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What does Styles's playful, androgynous persona tell us about gender now? More recently, he surprised people (and outraged some) by wearing a frilly gown, vaguely belle époque in feel, under a black jacket, on the cover of US Vogue in December 2020 – the cover line read: "Harry Styles Makes His Own Rules". He has the honour of being the first solo male cover model in the magazine's history. The fact that the cover photo was cropped at the waist reduces its impact; the Gucci gown in its entirety is voluminous, lacey, and very feminine, as we see in the fashion shots inside, which feature other iconoclastic looks: Styles modelling a skirt, a couple of kilts, a couple of crazy couture coat-gown hybrids, a crinoline worn over a suit, and some more ordinary trouser-and-jacket combinations. An endearing picture of him sitting beside his sister, with whom he used to play dress-up, Styles in his skin, and looking totally comfortable in it.
At the Met Gala in 2019, Styles wore a sheer black blouse and a pearl earring – the theme was "Camp" (Credit: Getty Images)
In the accompanying interview, Styles says: "There is so much joy to be had in playing with clothes. I've never thought too much about what it means – it just becomes this extended part of creating something." The writer of the article, Hamish Bowles, says that Styles "manages to make ruffles a compelling new masculine proposition, just as Mr Fish's frothy white cotton dress… did for Mick Jagger when he wore it for the Rolling Stones' free performance in Hyde Park in 1969". The rampant masculinity of the Stones was never in question, decked in white dresses or not. There is something different going on with Styles; gentler and more ambiguous, as if he is channelling the innocence of childhood, the time before we encounter gender politics. The photos seem to say: what would we grow up to be if we didn't have to choose?
Is this question incendiary? The Vogue shoot drew a few attacks from trolls in the United States. One female commentator sounded the alarm on Twitter at "the steady feminisation of our men at the same time as Marxism is being taught to our children". A male counterpart joined in on Twitter by declaring that "it is… a referendum on masculinity for men to don fluffy dresses", and averring that the Vogue shoot is part of a plot. "Bring back manly men!", cried the trolls… because men are an endangered species!
In response, Styles doubled down on his image and was photographed for Variety in a frilly coat while eating a banana, and in a pink satin blouse. The banana was a joke, but like everything about him, also weirdly sexy. The message that he doesn't give a damn about his "masculinity" is loud and clear.
In the video for Watermelon Sugar, Styles sports playful sunglasses and an androgynous look (Credit: SME/ Columbia Records/ Pulse Recording)
The trolls must be blind, though. Check out the video for Styles' track Watermelon Sugar ("This video is dedicated to touching", says the introduction) in which he cavorts on a beach with a posse of minimally-clad female models. The video archly presents this as innocent fun. Surely some kind of rampantly heterosexual credentials are on display here? And yes, Styles is wearing a bright orange and lime green knitted vest with what appear to be children's sunglasses; he can't help himself.
'Implosion of masculinity'
That aside, the trolls might have a point about the coming apocalypse of old-school masculinity. I can think of two good examples of recent, influential books that argue masculinity is on the way out. Hanna Rosin's The End of Men, and the Rise of Women (2012) argues that women in the West have begun outstripping men on a range of important social and economic indicators (such as education) because women are better suited to life in a post-industrial world. (But see her bleak vision of how women are making backward steps as a result of the pandemic here.) The artist Grayson Perry – who has a female alter-ego, Claire – in his book The Descent of Man explores from the inside the implosion of masculinity, arguing that its rigid norms no longer make sense. Does masculinity have itself up against a wall?
An icon of hetero-masculinity in the 1960s, Mick Jagger wore a dress by designer Mr Fish on stage (Credit: Getty Images)
The sociologist Raewyn Connell, author of Masculinities, is an expert on what she calls "hegemonic masculinity": the rigid codes that constitute and reproduce masculine power. I talked to her about the "controversy" over Styles's dress sense. "I can remember folk becoming apoplectic in the 1960s that 'You can't tell them apart nowadays… '" she tells BBC Culture. "Complaining about the Beatles and Gerry & the Pacemakers and the Rolling Stones wearing long hair and paisley blouses, and the girls wearing jeans, and Twiggy looking like an undernourished boy.
"And come to think of it, back in the 1920s they were complaining that the Flappers smoked and swore like men, and got Eton crops like Josephine Baker, and for heaven's sake, they were even getting the vote! Western civilisation is ruined!"
From the perspective of the entertainment industry, where artists have often operated on the margins, wasn't the battle against gender fluidity lost a long time ago? Alexis Petridis, the rock and pop critic at the Guardian, tells BBC Culture that in his view pop music was much more radical with regard to gender back in the 1980s, the era of Soft Cell, Culture Club, Marilyn, and Pete Burns. Gender fluidity 40 years ago "was a bit bolder than doing it now", he says, because "there was a very different, far less accepting attitude to sexuality or gender that wasn't heteronormative ".
David Bowie famously subverted sexual stereotypes – often wearing make-up and dresses (Credit: Alamy)
Still, Petridis's take on Styles is very positive. "If seeing Harry Styles in a dress on the cover of Vogue makes a kid who doesn't feel that they fit in with accepted gender norms feel better about themselves, then that's great – that's something else that pop can do, at its best. In all sorts of ways, it can make you feel less alone."
Styles certainly impresses Michelle Ruiz, a contributing editor at Vogue who wrote a celebratory essay about how "The Pure Joy of Harry Styles Got Me Through 2020". I ask her if she thinks Styles is having a significant impact on masculinity. "In an era of so much toxic… masculinity, Styles is a refreshing, modern contrast," she says. "Here is a man in a dress preaching about the power of treating people with kindness…. Frankly, being kind and loving and perhaps wearing a strand of pearls over your sweater shouldn't make you any less of a man."
Harry Styles often plays with gender stereotypes in his choice of jewellery and outfits (Credit: Getty Images)
The article in Variety, "This Charming Man", gushes about Styles being the next Bowie – Styles is with Bowie's former label, Columbia Records. Styles is wonderfully polymorphous, but this is a stretch. When I ask Petridis about the comparison, he says: "Bowie was a unique figure, a one-off, you're not going to get someone like him again because pop music isn't the primary focus of youth culture anymore". Stars like Styles, however eye-catching their dresses, now have to compete with all the information on the internet and social media. His wardrobe aside, it seems Styles' strategy is simply to aim to be a good, honest person, irrespective of his gender.
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