#OH NO FRANCE PEN?? UGH so much for multi tasking why is this getting tense suddenly 😭

[statementlou]

Good question!! Here's what I said: "I feel like in the past he was the most feminized by fandom, and not because of his mannerisms or look, but because of his willingness to embrace his emotional intelligence- to cry/ talk about crying openly, to share readily about his feelings and be vulnerable, all these things coded as feminine." You're right, that was an overstatement- but also I feel like there's something worth picking apart in there. First of all, you talk about his looks and his height being factors since TXF days but tbh I think that's somewhat backwards, that it's him being feminized by fandom that has led to perceptions of him being way tinier than he is, right through to this day, and to memory retcons like that he was drastically smaller and more delicate and so forth than the rest of them on TXF- they were all tiny, possibly Niall was shorter than Louis, but who is femininizing Niall? I mean look at this picture:

Is Louis really so much smaller or girlier looking than anyone else? IMO no (and not just cause they've put him in front). In terms of only appearance, was he really so much more delicate and pretty and feminine at 18 than 17 year old doe eyed, soft spoken and sensitive Zayn? They were all little and pretty back then, not ONLY Louis, but Louis was and is perceived differently- I would argue that those traits came to be associated with him not because of his appearance, but that his appearance was and is perceived with a focus on those elements because of, as you say, his mannerisms. I guess part of the issue for me is that I don't see male queerness as feminine and I resist that framing! The extreme heteronormativity of equating gay with feminine is basically based on the idea 'you like to fuck men so you are like a woman cause that's who fuck men', but actually queer culture and physicality is a whole separate thing and flamboyance isn't femininity at all... but that's about twenty steps into nuance past most of what happens in fandom for sure. So anyway, yeah, his presentation as something other than hetero-masculine fed the idea of him being feminine, but I think it was fed and cemented by him also displaying other traits associated with femininity such as a willingness to be vulnerable and talk about crying a lot and how much he loved his mum and sisters and other emotionally open things that Real Men don't. And I think that the extremity of the way people think of him as small and delicate come from all of that rather than the other way around, something that's especially relevant NOW when his emotional sensitivity and openness is the only one of those traits still on display.

Of course, there's also another reason why people feminize Louis and retcon lots of things about him to try to make it work that a LOT of those ideas have come from and been kept alive by; because they want to use him as a fantasy proxy for themselves in relation to Harry, and they want to make him into something they, as women, identify with in that fantasy scenario, to make him into a Y/N for larries or anyone who can't fully shake the recognition that Harry will never look at them or anyone like them the way he did at Louis, so they keep some version of him in the picture, but shape it closer and closer to themselves by making him out to be tiny and feminine and soft spoken (LMAO IF THERE'S ONE THING LOUIS AINT) and so forth. It is what it is but I wish real actual Louis was left out of it; there is zero relationship between that character and the actual (5'9") adult man and the way those ideas of him bleed into analysis of the actual person is awful imo.