Fans Defend Harry Styles After Trolls Call His Vogue Dress Shoot an ‘Attack’ on ‘Manly Men’

UPDATE: December 2, 2020—Weeks later, Harry Styles has directly responded to Candace Owens's tweet in the cheekiest way. “Bring back manly men,” he captioned an Instagram photo of himself wearing a powder blue suit and white blouse while eating a banana.

Unfortunately, Owens is letting his nod go to her head. “When people try to tell me I don’t have influence, and then @Harry_Styles dedicates an entire post to my tweet,” she tweeted shortly after. “I inspire global conversation. #BringBackManlyMen. Shots fired.”

She also posted another image of Styles from the movie Dunkirk with the hashtag, #BBMM. I guess this is why you never feed the trolls.

ORIGINAL STORY:

So last week—November 13, to be exact—the issue of Vogue that has Harry Styles on the cover in a ball gown came out (click here for pics). He also wears dresses and skirts within the magazine's pages because literally why not? It was the first time a man has been the solo cover star of the fashion bible, and Styles did it in a damn dress. It was glorious. It was high fashion. It was progressive. And, perhaps most important, it was fucking hot.

“When you take away ‘There’s clothes for men and there’s clothes for women,’ once you remove any barriers, obviously you open up the arena in which you can play,” Styles told Vogue. “I find myself looking at women’s clothes, thinking they’re amazing.”

Obviously, conservative talking heads are having meltdowns about this. “There is no society that can survive without strong men,” Candace Owens tweeted, for some reason, on November 14. “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's an outright attack,” she continued. “Bring back manly men.”

An attack, she says!

“You're pathetic,” Booksmart director Olivia Wilde replied. Yup.

Of course, other famous far-right trolls took the opportunity to defend their fragile heteronormative ideologies. I don't have time to unpack all of Ben Shapiro's tweets, but this one's my favorite:

Mostly, I just like the word floofy. I much prefer floofy to actual Senator Ted Cruz's attempt to connect Styles to Jeffrey Epstein.

Do these folks know what they've done? Incensing the Harry Styles hive?

Kathy Griffin is right. If I know anything about Styles—and I do feel it's my journalistic duty to inform you one of his Vogue photos is currently the background of my phone—it's that people on the internet love the guy and will fight you. I don't think the far right is ready.

Of course, there were more than just witty rejoinders and hilarious dunks about the topic. People also laid down some facts. “Harry Styles is plenty manly because manly is whatever you want it to be, not what some insecure, toxic, woman-hating, homophobic dickheads decided it was hundreds of years ago,” actor Jameela Jamil tweeted. “He’s 104% perfect.”

Like I said, facts. And isn't “facts over feelings” Shapiro's favorite motto?

His mom, Anne Twist, weighed in on the controversy, saying Harry “has always been Harry.” We love to see it. Watch, below:

This, my friends, has been a master class on shutting down trolls.

Emily Tannenbaum is an entertainment journalist, critic, and screenwriter living in L.A. Follow her on Twitter.

Originally Appeared on Glamour