Harry Styles has become an icon for daring to defy “toxic masculinity” as Vogue featured him on its cover while wearing a dress. It seems to have had huge reactions for something that is nothing new, yet article after article with “Harry Styles wears a dress for Vogue – and it’s controversial” and “The Rise of Teens Idols Timothée Chalamet & Harry Styles: Destroying Toxic Masculinity” raises the question, what is toxic masculinity? That men like to be strong? That men like to think and theorize about cosmic wonders of the world?
The textbook definition according to Oxford is: “A set of attitudes and ways of behaving stereotypically associated with or expected of men, regarded as having a negative impact on men and on society as a whole.”
Yet according to The Good Man Project it means:
“Toxic masculinity is a narrow and repressive description of manhood, designating manhood as defined by violence, sex, status and aggression. It’s the cultural ideal of manliness, where strength is everything while emotions are a weakness; where sex and brutality are yardsticks by which men are measured, while supposedly “feminine” traits—which can range from emotional vulnerability to simply not being hypersexual—are the means by which your status as “man” can be taken away.”
The reason that there is so much criticism from many conservatives might be because being a man during these times is becoming very hard. Young boys everywhere, not even in this country alone, are being told many different things about gender, sexuality and stereotypes simultaneously, messing with their heads. Definitions and meanings are being mixed and changed to fit whatever the people want it to define or mean just to prove themselves right and it’s starting to have very serious repercussions on society.
People are so cruel and merciless to those who do not think like them, making others either accept that things be one way or another just for the sake of the majority. Politicians and celebrities insult and argue with one another for the whole world to see just so they can say, “Yeah that’s right, I represent you” or “How dare they say that, I would never, I support you.” Then they retract all of what they said in case the people go against them. “I apologize for believing in this,” or “I didn’t mean to insult you with my way of thinking.” People with such platforms apologize for things they shouldn’t even need to apologize for, but they do because we make them.
Regarding all of this, people still praise Harry Styles for going against the conservatives and their political and social views. Being a man and wearing a dress is not new and does not “defy” toxic masculinity anymore than cancel culture “creates” social justice.
Men wearing dresses have been around for a long time. In many cultures of the past like Ancient Greece and the Elizabethan Era, it was forbidden for women to act, so men had to take their roles. The concept was used until the late 1600s yet lasted longer in Japan. Cross-dressing finally made it to the big screen when Charlie Chaplin and Stan Laurel introduced it to America in their silent films. It was big in the music industry as they had David Bowie, Mick Jagger, Prince, Freddy Mercury, Nirvana and many more, which was also what made them unique. It has been used in movies like Mrs. Doubtfire and Mulan, and in dedicated TV episodes of sitcoms and comedies.
There have also been many artists and celebrities who have dressed the same way as Styles. As Rachel Askinasi has said in her article, “I just can’t comprehend how Styles can be seen as a “revolutionary” when so many marginalized people have been mocked, ostracized, beaten and even killed for doing the same thing he’s done.”
Billy Porter and Marsha P. Johnson, are only some of the many examples who did what Harry Styles did, yet Styles is supposedly revolutionary.
This Vogue cover wasn’t the biggest demonstration of defying toxic masculinity. For example, Pedro Pascal has played a space bounty hunter assassin that adopts a child in “The Mandalorian.” There are very few examples of men who take time to be a single father in popular culture, yet his performance makes it look like child’s play. Terry Crews manages to play a tough yet emotional police sergeant who also raises two kids in the TV show Brooklyn Nine-Nine, which shows men that it is ok to be hard and tough on the outside and soft and loving on the inside.
Yet the biggest example of them all is Lin-Manuel Miranda. His ability to show and express vulnerability in not just his shows, but in real life too, is one of the greatest ways to stand up against toxic men. When he won his Tony Award for his play “Hamilton,” he delivered an emotional and powerful speech on the Pulse Nightclub Shooting of 2016. The reason that these people are men on top of the list on Google for defying toxic masculinity was not because they “challenge gender expectations,” but because they decided to hit where it hurts: via the expression of emotion.
The one thing, above all others that men are socially conditioned to do, is to never show any emotion except anger. So what do these wonderful people do? The exact opposite.
According to Teaching Tolerance, “While gender identity is a deeply held feeling of being male, female or another gender, people of different genders often act differently, not because of biological characteristics but because of rigid societal norms created around femininity and masculinity.”
The people themselves are the ones who put names to the faults of men and only recognize it either out of spite or out of sense of duty. This is why it is so important to know and understand that no one truth is wrong and no one truth is right. There is only truth.
Article by Jose Salinas-Morales of Watkins Mill High School
What really defines what men wear and what women wear? Does it even matter? These are questions that are increasingly being asked by a new generation who have shunned gender structure norms and helped facilitate a new wave of non-binary fashion trends. Although women wearing what would traditionally be called men’s clothing has been longer accepted, the redefinition of masculinity has resurfaced and flourished in a modern social climate. The rise of the “soft boy” has become popular on social media, brands like Gucci and Givenchy are creating collections that feature many adrogynous elements and men in entertainment such as Young Thug, Jaden Smith and Bad Bunny have followed suit wearing gender-fluid fashion in their work and streetwear.
In Vogue’s December 2020 issue, singer Harry Styles made history becoming the first man to grace the cover of Vogue solo. The cover sparked a lot of controversy on the internet as he was wearing a light blue, floor-length gown along with a blazer on top. As the cover garnered both praise and criticism, this Vogue issue prompted a much-needed conversation about toxic masculinity, gender norms, gender-fluid fashion and the history of transgender representation in mainstream media. Many conservatives and traditionalists expressed their discontentment with the Vogue cover and Styles’ apparel because of their outdated beliefs on what it is to be a man.
Conservative commentator Candace Owens took to Twitter to express her discrepancies with Styles wearing a dress on the Vogue cover, claiming, “It is an outright attack. Bring back manly men.” Fellow conservative critic Ben Shapiro backed Owens and added that the cover was “a referendum on masculinity for men to don floofy dresses.”
What both Shapiro and Owens have failed to realize is that the exploration of gender identity through fashion and beyond is not simply just a new trend. Musicians have often been known to blur the gender lines of society: Iconic rock legend David Bowie was notorious for pushing boundaries within gender and sexuality—most notably with his alter ego Ziggy Stardust where he wore flamboyant, skin tight jumpsuits and glittery make-up—and the band Queen’s Freddie Mercury had an unapologetic persona transcending gender barriers through extravagant costumes and exuberant onstage persona. Mick Jagger, Boy George, Iggy Pop and countless other musicians have helped redefine gender expectations through their art while simultaneously destigmatizing femininity amongst men.
Harry Styles being the first man to stand alone on the cover of Vogue is a huge moment for gender-fluidity, and it’s amazing that Styles with his celebrity status was able to showcase gender-bending fashion into the mainstream.
While I think this is progressing the conversation in the right direction, it would be irresponsible to not acknowledge the queer people and trans femmes of color who came before him and pioneered this gender-fluid movement but were instead ostracized, marginalized and castrated for the same thing that Styles, a white, cisgendered man is getting celebrated for.
Marsha P. Johnson was a drag-queen and a gay liberation activist, becoming the most prominent figure of the Stonewall uprising of 1969. She faced major criticism for her self-expression that many other transgender women similarly face on a daily basis. Members of the LGBTQIA+ community offered their commentary on making Styles the face of the gender-fluid fashion movement; gender non-conforming writer and activist Alok Vaid-Menon expressed their thoughts on Styles’ Vogue cover in an extensive Instagram post, stating, “We can both acknowledge this unprecedented moment while also remembering that it could only happen because of the resistance of trans femmes of color.” They continued on to say, “[trans femme] aesthetics make it to the mainstream, but not our bodies. We are still dismissed as ‘too much’ and ‘too queer’ because we aren’t palatable enough to whiteness and heteronormativity.”
It’s been a common occurrence throughout history for movements started by people of marginalized communities to be reduced to watered-down trends without even including the real faces of those movements for the sake of “digestibility.” Until mainstream media is able to create space for members of those marginalized communities to facilitate a conversation on gender-fluidity and non-binary entity, the resilient work of many non-binary people trans women will not be able to reach its full potential.
Article by Kristal Maimo-Fokum of John F. Kennedy High School
Photo courtesy of Tyler Mitchell via Vogue