The recent issue of Vogue had Hollywood celebrity Harry Styles flaunting beautiful skirt on its cover picture. Harry adorned ruffled skirt, an evening gown and tutu skirt and a couple of more outfits, for the magazine’s December issue.
While all these outfits that are traditionally considered as women’s attire, Harry was lauded by many for putting across the message that fashion has no gender and one can wear whatever make them happy. But like we have always seen, there will be someone out there who will never stop to criticise if you want to bring in change, and in this case, it was commentator Candance Owens.
She took to Twitter and wrote, “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.”
We want to ask her ‘why’. Why is Harry Styles’s skirt is so upsetting for her. It’s 2020, if men want to wear skirts, then how does that make them less manly? If we can call a woman wearing pant suit empowered then why can’t we embrace men in skirts too?
“It is so sad that people would even criticise him something so small, a decision made by Harry, and only him to wear a skirt or a dress. Since when clothes have gender? Who made these rules that men can’t wear skirts. It’s just a way to encourage people who they really are and it’s hard for people to digest this because they still misinterpret masculinity,” says Shakti Singh Yadav, a male influencer, who creates content about gender neutral fashion and beauty.
Recalling a past incident, Shakti says, “I was criticised by people for wearing skinny jeans when I was younger. People would just assume about my sexual orientation only because I wore skinny jeans.”
Holding the core upbringing of an individual responsible for this mindset, Siddharth Batra, a male influencer, who has been constantly creating content to erase the stereotypical thought about what’s manly and not, he says, “I’ve personally done a styling video on wearing a skirt and honestly, I enjoyed wearing it. But people get triggered when they see someone breaking out of a mold, they have been brought up in. It’s no one’s fault, it’s the upbringing. But something,
that is our personal responsibility to break out of as adults. I wish for a day when the concept of personal choice runs across the board. Not just fashion,” says Siddharth.
In defence of Harry Styles gender fluid attire, lot of celebs tweeted and lauded him. Actors like Jameela Jamil, Olivia Wilde, Zac Braff took to Twitter and defended Harry. Jamila tweeted saying, "Harry Styles is plenty manly, because manly is whatever you want it to be, not what some insecure, toxic, woman-hating, homophobic d***heads decided it was hundreds of years ago. He's 104% perfect." While Zac said, “our whole lives boys and men are told we need to be manly. Life is short. Be whatever the f*ck you want to be."This is not first time that a male celeb has been criticised for their unique fashion attempt. In the past, Kanye West was highly criticized for wearing a leather skirt for one of his performance. The criticism was so bad that he asked Getty to take off all his skirt images from the website. Closer home, actor Ranveer Singh has been trolled multiple times for wearing skirts. But that did not stop him from wearing it repeatedly. Fashion experts believe that criticising a public figure for wearing something completely different have always amazed people.
Citing the example of Priyanka Chopra Jonas’s Met Gala Look, stylist Bakul Dutta says, “She was trolled so much because she opted a completely different lookand it wasn’t something that was expected out of her and similarly, Harry Styles skirt became a talking point because it wasn’t expected. Fashion today is reflecting this mood of transformation in the society and it remains to be one of the most creative, vibrant and tangible forms of depicting this cultural
transformation. So, restricting under the realm of gender is not fair. Also, the times have changed, earlier colours were specified on gender, but these days it's not like that. Men wear all sorts of colour and prints that women wear, so if men want to wear something that attracts them, then what is so wrong about it," says Stylist Bakul Dutta.
0 Comments