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Many people loved Harry Styles’ history-making Vogue cover. But Billy Porter was not one of them…
The 52-year-old Pose star slammed the fashion bible’s decision to put the former One Direction musician on its cover, making him the first man in the magazine’s 127-year history to appear solo on the cover.
The cover was even more ground-breaking because the 27-year-old singer was wearing a dress in the picture; something which Billy Porter has done (and done excellently, may we add) on many red carpets for many years prior…
“I feel like the fashion industry has accepted me because they have to. I’m not necessarily convinced and here is why,” Billy Porter said in an interview with The Sunday Times, before referencing the magazine’s decision to put Harry Styles in a dress and explore gender fluid and non-binary fashion.
“I created the conversation and yet Vogue still put Harry Styles, a straight white man, in a dress on their cover for the first time,” he continued.
“I’m not dragging Harry Styles, but he is the one you’re going to try and use to represent this new conversation? He doesn’t care, he’s just doing it because it’s the thing to do.
“This is politics for me. This is my life. I had to fight my entire life to get to the place where I could wear a dress to the Oscars and not be gunned now. All he has to do is be white and straight.”
We definitely see where Billy Porter is coming from! And speaking of that historical Oscars moment, let’s take a moment to remember the time the actor wore a phenomenal Christian Siriano tuxedo gown to the Academy Awards back in 2019– something we bet he didn’t always think would be possible, especially as he admitted that he was previously told that his “queerness would be a liability.”
“I changed the whole game,” Billy Porter continued in his interview.
“I. Personally. Changed. The. Whole. Game. And that is not ego, that is just fact. I was the first one doing it and now everybody is doing it.”
Neither Harry Styles nor his reps have yet to comment on Billy Porter’s interview, but we would be very interested to hear his take on the matter.