Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez feels Harry Styles' Vogue cover has 'James Dean vibes'
Harry AOC
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is the latest celebrity to be in love with Harry Style's much-talked-about Vogue cover.
The congresswoman defended Styles’ cover in an Instagram Q&A on November 22.
“It looks wonderful,” she wrote. “The masculine and feminine elements are balanced beautifully — the hair and jacket styling give me James Dean vibes too.”
She added that some people “are mad” at the cover because “some folks are very sensitive to examining and exploring gender roles in society. Perhaps for some people, it provokes some anger or insecurity around masculinity/femininity/etc. If it does, then maybe that’s part of the point. Sit with that reaction and think about it, examine it, explore it, engage it, and grow with it.”
“What’s the point of creating things if they don’t make people think? Or feel or reflect?” she concluded. “Especially as an artist or creative? Who wants to see the same things all the time? And never explore their assumptions? Anyways it looks bomb so [shrug emoji].”
Recently, Harry Styles made history as the first-ever solo male to appear on the cover of Vogue. For this momentous cover, he dazzled in a Gucci ball gown and appeared inside the issue in a series of designer duds, from Comme des Garçons Homme kilt to a deconstructed Victorian number was created by Harris Reed.
Though many praised the cover, New York Times best-selling author Owens criticized it. “There is no society that can survive without strong men,” she wrote on Twitter. “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.”
Many celebrities defended Styles, including a variety of A-listers such as Zach Braff, Olivia Wilde and Kathy Griffin.
Griffin took to Twitter to warn the author, tweeting, “Candy Owens doesn’t know what she in for going up against the Harry Styles stans.”
Meanwhile, Braff pointed out why the term “manly” can be problematic for some guys. “Our whole lives boys and men are told we need to be manly,” he tweeted. “Life is short. Be whatever the f–k you want to be.”
As for Wilde, she kept it short and sweet, replying to Owens’ tweet, “You’re pathetic.” However, in the accompanying Vogue cover story, Wilde specifically applauds Styles’ gender-fluidity and modern sense of self.
“I hope that this brand of confidence as a male that Harry has — truly devoid of any traces of toxic masculinity — is indicative of his generation and therefore the future of the world,” she said. “I think he is in many ways championing that, spearheading that. It’s pretty powerful and kind of extraordinary to see someone in his position redefining what it can mean to be a man with confidence.”