#it’s giving harry fan it’s giving 1d fan it’s giving mental illness it’s giving gay

[definegirlfriends]

pretends to be shocked

[kingstylesdaily]

The Pure Joy of Harry Styles Got Me Through 2020

BY MICHELLE RUIZ

Some people turned to controlled substances, tie-dye matching sets, or the ubiquitous sourdough, but it was Harry Styles in a Gucci chick egg sweater, crooning about oral pleasure on NPR's Tiny Desk Concert series, that got me though some of the gloomiest days of 2020.

Shot in pre-pandemic February, the dreamy acoustic set, including riffs on the smash singles "Watermelon Sugar" and "Adore You," is a 16-minute serotonin rush: Styles, in his gravelly tenor, singing that he'd walk through fire for you; Styles, with his perfect, princely hair and rugged stubble, dancing on a swiveling office chair. It's unbearably charming, sensual, and fundamentally joyful; the 26-year-old Brit feel like a burst of confetti in a relentlessly terrible year.

Styles's sophomore solo album, Fine Line, was released at the tail end of 2019, but it fully bloomed in 2020: "Watermelon Sugar," his first number-one solo single in the U.S., was the undisputed earworm of summer; "Adore You" was the second most-listened-to song of the year, according to Variety, which named Styles Hitmaker of the Year. It's no coincidence that Fine Line was streamed more than 1 billion times in the throes of a global, deadly pandemic: "It's an album full of uptempo, unabashedly fun bops," Tia Williams, beauty writer, author of the forthcoming novel Seven Days in June, and avowed Styles fan, told Vogue. "'Watermelon Sugar,' 'Adore You,' and 'Sunflower' are like rays of light beaming on Laurel Canyon."

Styles's shiny, happy, summer-of-love aura provided a desperately-needed antidote to 2020: The "Watermelon Sugar" video, dropped in May, was "dedicated to touching," a technicolor, quasi-orgy on the beach that both made me long for the innocence of the Before Times, but also felt—for three minutes, anyway—like an escape from the horrors of the news cycle.

"2020 has been such a terrifying year," Williams said, but the cheeky world of "Watermelon Sugar" "can't help but take you away from our grim reality." Tyler McCall, editor-in-chief of Fashionista.com, has been "listening to Fine Line on repeat just to get through the year," she told me. "I think it's impossible to be in a bad mood when you're listening to 'Golden.'" (It must be noted, too, that album's breakup suite of songs, like "Cherry," spoke to the forlorn, aching nature of the pandemic.)

McCall and Williams both took a shine to Styles during the One Direction era, with Williams citing his "ethereal beauty, tats, and 70's rock-style songs." I made the grave mistake of overlooking Styles in his 1D infancy, shrugging him off as just another basic, beanie-clad boy band member. But I learned this year that he's a sex god like Jagger, a showman like Elton and a boundary-pusher in the grand tradition of Bowie, with his own personal ethos of inclusivity and sweetness. The 11th track on Fine Line—the retro-groovy "Treat People with Kindness"—is also a Styles mantra, splashed on official merch and backed up by vocal support of the LGBTQ+ community, a pledge to back Black Lives Matter, the legendary act of feeding a fan's fish after taking temporary shelter when his car broke down in October and not speaking ill of his exes, even on Howard Stern. “I just don’t think you need to be a dick to be a good artist," Styles told The Guardian last year.

"He makes niceness chic," Williams said, choosing an "un-edgy, totally earnest mantra" despite his rock star bonafides. "Harry Styles is the heart-eyes emoji, sprung to life." (At first, Williams says she felt peculiar fangirling a former boy-bander as a 40-something Black mom. "I wondered if I was having a midlife crisis," she told me, "but then, I was introduced to actress/producer/novelist Robinne Lee, whose brilliant novel The Idea of You, was inspired by him, and who is, herself, a 40-something Black mom, and I was like, 'Yes, I've found my people.'")

Style's beautiful soul is just one reason why I stand by my own budding fandom, even as I'm mocked by certain family members and even my six-year-old daughter for requesting t-shirts from his official store as my only Christmas gift, or vaulting myself down the Harry YouTube rabbit hole (please seek out his duet with Lizzo on "Juice" at her Miami show at the Fillmore back in January, another world ago). But it's not just that he reads Alain de Botton, writes his own music, wears insane sweaters and has a cosmic connection with Stevie Nicks. Styles also strikes me as a man uniquely suited to the moment.

In an era of grotesque, Trump-fueled toxic masculinity, the sexiest thing about Styles is that he's comfortable in his femininity. What began with his sheer blouse and single drop-earring at the 2019 Met Gala flourished in 2020 with a spate of traditionally femme fashion, including fishnets, a signature pearl necklace and a Gucci dress, as the first male to ever appear on the cover of Vogue.

Tyler Mitchell's Vogue shoot "felt significant because it's still so rare to see male celebrities challenge conventional ideals of masculinity," Liz Plank, author of For the Love of Men, told Vogue. "We still live in a culture that encourages us to protect girls from gendered expectations and stereotypes, but that gets very uncomfortable when we suggest doing the same for boys."

The way Styles dresses, the fact that he paints his nails and wears stacked heels beneath his sailor pants, continually prompts speculation about sexuality, and I can't help but notice that this doesn't trigger him, or elicit passionate defenses or assertions that he is not gay. When The Guardian asked if he'd ever been asked if he is bisexual, Styles replied, “It’s just: who cares?" He denies he's “sprinkling in nuggets of sexual ambiguity to try and be more interesting," as he puts it. "I want things to look a certain way. Not because it makes me look gay, or it makes me look straight, or it makes me look bisexual, but because I think it looks cool... I just think sexuality’s something that’s fun."

Styles's splendor-in-the-grass moment in Vogue sparked now-infamous backlash from conservative talking head Candace Owens, who whined: "Bring back manly men." That reaction "is proof that women can be just as sexist and drunk on the patriarchal kool-aid as men," Plank said, adding that the right-wing is creating a "moral masculinity panic, this idea that men are under attack by feminism." Plank credits Styles, but also notes that "there's a courageous pack of masculinity-bending, often LGBTQ or gender non-binary men, who have been rocking these same looks for decades getting punished for it, rather than celebrated for it."

Styles has become a fashion influencer for folks across the gender spectrum, including McCall, who now feels inspired to wear her grandmother's pearls "without seeming prim and uptight," and Ryan Kazmarek, a Harry devotee and stylist at IGK Soho in New York who is still mourning the fact that coronavirus thwarted his plan to fly to Styles's now-postponed Manchester, United Kingdom shows with his boyfriend, William. Styles's fearlessness "has opened my eyes," Kazmarek told me. "I have recently been like, 'Okay, I'm going to check the women's section.'"

For his next act, Styles, who had a small but memorable role as a British soldier Christopher Nolan's Dunkirk, will star in Olivia Wilde's forthcoming psychological-horror film, Don't Worry, Darling—and the photos of a dapper, suited Styles on the set has already overwhelmed Harries. "I don't even like horror movies—they literally give me nightmares—and still I am mentally handing my money over to Olivia Wilde," McCall said.

via vogue.com

[theproofinthisong]

i really wanna support liam. i really do. the hate (or indifference, which is better, but still...not great) directed against him, fueled often by his own fandom, always made me so mad. i was always the first to defend liam when i felt pointing the finger at him wasn’t fair, which was happening a lot during the 1d days and his solo career. he always felt like the perfect person to put all the blame on, even and especially when he did nothing. i feel like a lot of the liam hate wasn’t and isn’t motivated by real reasons. people just want to hate on him because it is easy. bullying him when he was kid and continuing to do so when he finally feels good about himself. and i wanna be clear. i will never stand for this kind of behavior. all the bad feelings i have right now doesn’t change the fact that i will NEVER accept people mocking liam for his appearance, his choice of clothes or the style of music he wants to make. i will never accept people denying the importance and significance he had in 1D, in lot of the songwriting and creation. that will never change. but loving liam doesn’t mean i have to give him a pass when he fucks up.

all of the boys did really problematic things once. you can deny it all you want, but it’s true. that doesn’t mean you cannot still love them. but you can’t pretend they never did mistakes in the first place. the thing is...you have to acknowledge the hurt you did. some of them did. some of them didn’t and some part of me is still expecting they’ll fix it, because it’s important. most of the things i found problematic in regards to the boys were done years ago. it doesn’t make it okay. but it shows they grew. and i really believe liam can grow out of this. i have faith in him. but in order to grow, you have to see your mistake. and fans sugarcoating the whole thing doesn’t help. at all.

both ways is not only a bad song. it’s an infuriating song. i can’t even believe it was approved. probably because liam’s team is full of men and they didn’t even care. they didn’t care about all the bi and lesbian girls they were going to hurt with this and they didn’t care about liam either because otherwise they would have stopped this from ever coming out. it would have been purely out of interest and money reasons but at least us liam fans wouldn’t have had to listen to this atrocity of a song. 

before both ways came out, i already knew it was going to be about bisexuality. and i was excited. because i trusted liam with it. with all the stunt shit we’ve been fed for years, i know how to seperate fake liam from real liam. i never believed he was this stupid and homophobic prick they were selling us. i mean. liam always supported louis and harry. he loved all the rainbows at the shows. he wrote home with louis. he made tons of flirty jokes to men without the slightest hint of mockery. and his relationship with zayn, whether you believe in ziam or not, was constant flirty touch and affection. liam always hugged him and the boys. he was tender with them and he didn’t see it as a weakness. so yeah, i trusted him with this. 

both ways made me so sad and angry. i was expecting a bi anthem or a least a cute gay bop. but what i got? another song fetishizing wlw and their attraction to girls for shock and hotness points. i mean it’s not like we already had TONS of these (the rita ora song, the weekend’s one, katy’s perry i kissed a girl and others...). and this one is so fucking graphic it made me puke. not that i’m against graphic imagery in general (medicine is one of my fave songs from HS1) but i am, surely, when it’s used to fetishize us and turn my community into a fantasy or a porn scenario.

 and that’s what both ways is all about. taking advantage of your girl’s bisexuality to live your dream of a threesome. using it when it benefits you and pretending it is just a phase otherwise because i mean...girls need the dick. they just need it. i will dive once into the lyrics in details because it made sad enough listening to it ONE TIME but look at them. they’re just transparent. 

the sexual aspect of it is at the center of song. i mean the word foreplay comes up in the THIRD line. as if a women’s bisexuality always has to do with sex. the whole thing is so fucking biphobic. the gut of writing “i don’t discriminate” and then making this song which is one of the most biphobic things i’ve ever heard? and the other writer saying it isn’t a threesome song?? how can you lie like that? look at the lyrics!! “nothing but luck that she got me involved/flipping that body you go head i got tails/sharing that body like it’s our last meal”?? how on earth are these lines not related to a couple having sex with another girl because it’s the man’s dream? in case you didn’t know it’s BLALANTLY there. the man (liam, in this case) literally says this: “who else do you wanna invite/never too much hands on your body/ and you’re all mine”. i’m BARFING. this is so fucking biphobic. the promiscuous greedy bisexual girl trope. the man insisting on the fact that she will always belong to him and the girls she has relatonships with are just one night stands he’s participating in. and as if it wasn’t enough it ends with this infamous part: “she says we’re young and we’re stupid/come on watch me while we do this/make everyday my birthday/ let’s celebrate she do things you won’t believe”. it just sums it all up. the phase and being young and not knowing what you want and messing with girls because it’s hot and wild but you’re still straight at the end of the day. the verse making it all about him when it should be about her. and once again, the hypersexualisation. it’s a disaster.

so yeah, being bisexual, this song hurted me deeply. i forced myself to listen to the whole album to support liam but my heart wasn’t in it. i was so shocked and disappointed. we don’t know everything that happened behind the scenes. one thing i can’t blame liam for is the song being even more creepy with maya being underage. i really don’t believe it’s a real relationship. liam’s team always put him in these weird ships with age difference and i don’t believe he has control over that. 

i also believe this wasn’t the album liam wanted to make. it doesn’t sound like him. there are like...5 songs out of the 17 i like there. the ep was a masterpiece. and liam promoted it. he loved it. he didn’t even bother with this one. it was delayed just like louis’  for other reasons. i don’t believe he had much creative input in this and i’m sad the album went on the low like that. i mean his team didn’t even speak a word. LOUIS promoted him. not his team. not liam himself. and i’m sad for him. he’s an incredible vocalist and a great songwriter and none of these two aspects showed in the album. it was barely talked about. out of ot4, liam was always the most underrated one (in terms of fandom) and that saddens me. 

but i can’t let all of this change what i’m thinking. i’m not going to shut my mouth and say this song is okay. it isn’t and people need to see it. i don’t know how much liam was involved. but he was. and being involved in this kind of stuff, no matter the percentage, is terrible. all of the articles now aren’t about his album being good. it’s about fans being angry over both ways. and i saw some liam fans saying it wasn’t fair. but this time, i’m sorry, it was. i’m glad people did not let it happen without saying things. this kind of songs hurt our community. and we won’t stay silent. now that the song is released, the harm is done. being a larrie, i know some people are pulling up the strings. they could have just...not released it out ot the hundred songs (and better ones) liam wrote. they didn’t. i’m sad he has a team that doesn’t care about him and is actually sabotaging him more than helping him. i hope it will change. because i love liam.

i won’t cancel him not only because he did so much for me but also because i believe in second chances. in certain cases. i don’t in others (rape and sexual assault for example). i don’t want him to have suicidal tendencies again (i had these and acted on them so trust me i know) but guilt tripping wlw who are rightly angered by the song is disgusting. liam has mental health issues and i hope he’ll get the help he needs. i will be there with him every step of the way. but having a mental illness or struggles doesn’t give you a pass to be biphobic. liam openly supported justin bieber after he confessed to abuse on twitter. he said very icky stuff about race two years ago and about gender recently. most of it comes from ignorance. i don’t believe one second if he was educated on it he would have said those things. he’ll get there. but it will never happen if we pretend it doesn’t exist.