Harry Styles and the Womanising Image
Everyone knows the name Harry Styles and unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last 14 years then you know Harry was the cheeky chappy from One Direction. You’ve seen Harry grow from a teenager to a grown man in front of you and have watched as he developed his vocal ability, talent and stage persona, moving on from One Direction to become one of the biggest celebrities in the world, taking on acting, challenging gender stereotypes and modeling.
However, gender fluidity and talent aren’t the only things Harry is known in the media and to the general public for. His dating life has always been the subject of public speculation with Harry being linked to woman after woman since the age of 16 when he was a fresh faced little boy on the X Factor. Harry was linked with Cher Lloyd during the show and this was just the start of the public narrative Harry was given by his then label and management company.
While this narrative started, fans of One Direction also noticed a closeness and intimacy between two of the members of One Direction and saw what appeared to be two young men falling in love as the band progressed through the show. Harry was]being pushed as a womaniser when many fans watched heand Louis flirt, share loaded glances and touch each other in ways that screamed relationship, rather than friendship. Thei closeness was used as a selling point and interviews showed how this couple were clearly something more than just best friends.
As One Direction started to take off Harry was seen with female after female and that narrative has continued to this day. What certain fans of Harry Styles noticed is that everytime a relationship was ‘confirmed’ it was by unnamed sources close to Harry.
Harry addressed this himself when he was speaking about the womaising narratives and the image pushed on him relentlessly by the media, when he stated that he has a lot of friends that are girls and apparently he was dating all of them. We also had all of the other members of One Direction stand up for him with Zayn saying that he ‘knows the real Harry,’ Louis stating that Harry and Taylor are ‘good friends, if that’ and Liam saying that being Harry comes with challenges that others wouldn’t understand.
Each and every one of Harry’s relationships are completely at odds with who he portrays himself to be as a person and who he tells us he is in interviews. Harry has always stated that he keeps his private life private and even shows us during the Late Night Talking video when he has public dates with females and private dates with a male. Further, Harry has stated that he doesn’t see being papped as part of a relationship and that he keeps his private life private and away from the public.
Another aspect of Harry’s public persona that is at odds with Harry is the fact that he looks incredibly uncomfortable, walks as far away from his ‘girlfriends’ as possible and barely touches them. There are also often yacht pictures or pictures on the Sushi restaurant balcony in LA, note the nod to Music for A Sushi Restaurant. Regardless of how many times Harry tells us that he keeps his private life private and that he’s never publicly been with anyone, fans of his are still quick to fall for the fauxmances put out by Harry’s team and vociferously defend the girls who he’s seen with, to the point they sometimes threaten, bully or harass other fans who don’t fall for the spin.
Each and every person Harry’s been linked with and seen with is confirmed by sources close to the couple, and one time, with Taylor Swift, by Simon Cowell. Seem familiar? Take a look at any celebrity relationship and see why they are linked. Are they in a movie together? PR at work. Is one of them queer? PR. Is one of them needing publicity? PR. The only time Harry has come close to confirming a relationship was during the Zane Low interview where he said oh that's my ex girlfriend, yet weeks before he was seen with her, he was on BBC breakfast with Nick Grimshaw and stated he didn't know her when asked. Odd to say the least.
If one party benefits from being publicly linked with another then it’s more than likely a PR romance, so let’s look back at Harry’s relationships. Taylor Swift was one of the biggest and one that’s still talked about to this day, even though the ‘relationship’ lasted for three months. What did Harry have to gain from being linked with Taylor? He got a wider American audience which was utilised to help One Direction break into the American Music market and for herself? What benefit was Taylor given with this relationship? Well she was linked with a well loved public figure and this was used later that year to market her songs to a wider audience than before, plus it’s given her a very famous ex to link songs to which she has done multiple times since-including at the American Music Awards which One Direction attended.
Another purely PR relationship was the relationship with Olivia Wilde. Fans of Harry’s noticed that he was papped with Olivia on the set of Don’t Worry Darling, but no one could have foreseen the next few years when Olivia would attend Harry’s shows, dancing around and making sure fans saw her. She also used Harry’s star to try to sell the movie and give herself a massive publicity boost. Harry refused to acknowledge her during the film premiers and would walk ahead of her in multiple pap pics.
Each and every one of Harry’s relationships has ended around the one year mark, with the exception of Olivia Wilde, yet as soon as the movie was released and promo was over, it was bye bye birdie. The newest 'relationship’ with Taylor Russell shows Harry as a disinterested boyfriend in the pap pics, showing more interest in his mobile phone than his supposed girlfriend. Current news articles have them moving in together, yet each and every relationship Harry has been publicly put through has him ‘getting serious’, ‘moving in together, and talking about babies and marriage, yet none see it through.
Is Harry seriously that fickle that he ends every relationship before it’s been a year, yet in his songs he writes with such beauty about long term love that yes, struggles with communication and distance, but endures? How can these beautiful songs be born from a man whos issues with commitment are so legendary?
Unless the songs are for someone else, the same someone else has always been there in the background. Harry has stated he’s had his own journey figuring out his sexuality, has been open about his sexuality with his family and friends and called his music ‘sparkly bi music’ on stage, yet he’s marketed as a heterosexual man with extreme commitment issues. He’s also acted in the queer movie, ‘My Policeman’and although he’s been separated from Louis Tomlinson in public, he has corresponding tattoos to Louis, like a ship without a compass, an anchor without a rope, a rose without a dagger, a heart without an arrow and a padlock without a key.
Am I wrong? No - and I’ll post articles showing proof that each and every relationship Harry’s been in has been confirmed by anonymous sources and not by Harry himself. Whether he’s queer isn’t opinion, it’s fact, but why has this fact been denied or buried for so long? The answer to that question is easy-to sell records of course. Having Harry play both sides, as a queer man and a ‘womanising commitmentphobe’ gives fans of Harry the idea that no relationship has permanence and that they, as fans, have as much of a chance with him as the models and celebrities he’s ‘been with’. Harry has not explicitly denied his sexuality either which gives his queer fans hope that one day the music industry will accept and respect queer artists without forcing hetronormative narratives onto them.
If you look beyond Harry’s public media persona, you’ll see a man who has had to hide his sexuality for the better part of almost a decade and a half. What is so wrong about being queer? Why can’t the music industry sell artists based on the music they make instead of who they are sleeping with? What are they so afraid of?
Is it that people will still love queer artists and they’ll lose a chunk of their income by alienating the Bible belt in America? Or is it that the public might see that there are more queer artists than many believe and that it’s okay to be queer? Separating church and state is neccessary, but can this be part of the reason that the music and entertainment industries as a whole remain incredibly homophobic and consistently closet entertainers?
Is it not time to show people that who you love, how you identify doesn’t matter? We can love who we love and yet still be good people. Maybe this article will open more eyes to how the industry works, but then again, ignorance is bliss and some people won’t ever see the wood for the trees.
Are you willing to look deeper or is your world view so fixed that you refuse to see what’s right in front of your face? You can be the judge of that, but once you see how this stuff works, you can’t unsee it and it opens your eyes to the abuse, manipulation and unjustness of the music industry.
Hopefully one day soon we’ll see a different industry and a new acceptance of queerness and a deeper understanding of queer artists and how they show fans who they are.
Behind The Curtains
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