Billy Porter isn’t impressed by Harry Styles and his gender-bending Vogue cover.
Porter insisted he was responsible for the latest wave of men wearing skirts and dresses.
“I changed the whole game,” he told The Sunday Times. “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.”
The Pose star admitted he felt some type of way after Styles was praised for wearing a skirt on the December 2020 cover of Vogue. According to CNN, the former One Direction band member is the first solo male to appear on the cover of American Vogue.
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“I feel like the fashion industry has accepted me because they have to. I’m not necessarily convinced, and here is why,” Porter said. “I created the conversation [about non-binary fashion], and yet Vogue still put Harry Styles, a straight white man, in a dress on their cover for the first time.”
Porter told the outlet he had no beef with Styles but pointed out the singer’s privileged position.
“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,” the Cinderella star said. “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.”
During the interview, Porter admitted he never thought he’d reach superstardom “because I’m gay.”
“I was told my queerness would be a liability, and I would never have the kind of success that I have,” he added. “And the naysayers were right for a very long time until they weren’t.”
