Rachel Kiley
Conservative commentator Candace Owens had some nasty things to say about Harry Styles wearing a dress on his groundbreaking Vogue cover last month, and the singer finally responded in the perfect way.
Owens, like many loud conservatives, likes to lament anything that isn’t rooted in archaic, patriarchal oppression as the destruction of society, so Styles wearing a dress really didn’t sit well with her.
“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,” she wrote. “Bring back manly men.”
Fellow conservatives, such as Ben Shapiro, joined her in her outrage, while fans of Styles just spammed them all with photos of the former boy bander blurring the line with his fashion choices over the years.
No one expected a response from Styles, who has a minimal social media presence and seemed unlikely to be bothered by such silly complaints.
But in his first Instagram post following the Vogue cover, featuring a picture of him wearing an outfit that undoubtedly would fail to meet Owens’ limited idea of “manliness,” Styles casually included a simple caption: “Bring back manly men.”
The shade sent fans into a tizzy, sharing their unequivocal support for Styles continuing to express himself through fashion without letting others’ antiquated opinions get in the way.
Meanwhile, Owens has continued her crusade to denigrate men who don’t express their manliness in a way she feels is correct and seems to be considering Styles’ acknowledgment of her as proof that she’s influential. In other words, even people who’ve been so publicly humiliated over their awful take can find a way to spin it into a positive, apparently.