No, Painting Your Nails Doesn’t Pass As Allyship: Harry Styles and The Legacy of Celebrity Queerbaiting

I’ve restarted this article maybe three times. I guess I’m not sure exactly where I want to begin with this one. Or how to do it. Although angry tweets from conservative activists like Ben Shapiro about how masculinity is in serious danger aren’t exactly a mark of well-informed, nuanced opinion, the Harry Styles queerbaiting debate is something I’ve thought about a lot this past pride month. And I don’t think we’re discussing it enough.

With full transparency, I am a cis, straight womxn and I acknowledge the intersections of my privilege when discussing a topic I am unequivocally watching from an outsider’s perspective. Nevertheless, I find the awkward nature of Harry Styles’ appeals to the LGBTQIA+ community – both stylistic and musical – the kind of confusing, if not disingenuous, messaging akin to seeing pride merch now sold nationwide at Target, a company, (lest we forget), whose former CEO Gregg Steinhafel garnered controversy in 2010 for donating $150,000 to MN Forward, a Minnesota-based political action group publicized for supporting politically conservative candidates who vocally opposed gay marriage.

Political beef aside, Target’s recent transformation into a #loveislove #happypridemonth environment seems less spurred by a sincere desire to embody progressive values in a tangible way, and more the product of a decision made by corporate executives that Target’s carefully orchestrated, meticulously branded approach to pride is incredibly profitable. And it is. While the comparisons aren’t exact, this is the same guiding principle behind celebrity-led and particularly musician-led, queerbaiting. Although there are numerous culprits, whose queerbaiting ranges from the questionable to the distinctly offensive (Taylor Swift and Ariana Grande also frequently crop up in this discussion), it seems that Harry Styles has made, more so than any other contemporary musician, queer aesthetics the definitive brand he now hinges his career upon. And it’s not okay.

Don’t get me wrong; I don’t care about who Harry Styles sleeps with. Really, I don’t. This piece isn’t a takedown of Olivia Wilde, or a commentary on the incessant gay romance rumors which followed Harry Styles and Louis Tomlinson since before One Direction even placed third on the X-Factor in 2010. Or even an attempt at creating a definitive guide of when incorporating the symbolism, language, and cultural signifiers traditionally used to subvert heteronormative gender and sexuality-based stereotypes bypass inclusivity and enter tokenistic territory. But I find it alarming that the current poster child for queer positivity and inclusive gender expression is a cisgender white man who has up until now only dated (albeit publicly) womxn. It implies that queerness can be adopted as a trend; a simple lifestyle change rather than a sexual and gender-based identification many take years to come to terms with and define on their own terms. And painting your nails, wearing a feather boa to the 2021 Grammys or donning a dress on the cover of Vogue doesn’t cut it.

Backing up briefly, ‘queerbaiting’ as a term is itself an early 2010s pop-culture phenomenon, entering contemporary terminology on first on Tumblr following the popularization of a number of TV shows, specifically ‘Supernatural’, ‘Teen Wolf’, and ‘Sherlock’, all of which depicted a pair of male friends whose intense and compelling friendships were immediately speculated about by audiences who recognized that the characters were written with intended chemistry and innuendos. But this was vehemently denied by the writers and actors in question as a ridiculous assumption that was entirely untrue. It’s like the television equivalent of saying “I love you bro, no homo.” Since then, the term ‘queerbaiting’ has gained momentum and even earned its own entry on dictionary.com, encapsulating “the practice of implying non-heterosexual relationships or attraction (in a TV show, for example) to engage or attract an LGBTQ audience or otherwise generate interest without ever actually depicting such relationships or sexual interactions”.

Queerbaiting is undeniably a slippery slope. It’s essentially the appropriation/appreciation debate revisited. And how does that debate manifest itself when holding public figures, especially beloved celebrities, accountable? Indeed celebrities, and particularly musicians, have historically played a crucial role in creating art that vocalizes acceptance, equality, and love, oftentimes doing so two steps, and sometimes more like ten, ahead of public opinion and social acceptability. Aside from queer artists like David Bowie and Elton John, who each publicly came out in the 1970s, undoubtedly helping to change public opinion surrounding gender and sexuality, and promoting a culture of tolerance and inclusivity, many straight, cisgender artists became invaluable allies to the queer community as well. Chiefly among them is Dolly Parton, whose 1991 song ‘Family’ features the lyrics ‘Some are preachers / some are gay / some are addicts, drunks and strays / But not a one is turned away when it's family’, and who was quoted in 2014 as saying “if people want to pass judgment, they're already sinning. The sin of judging is just as bad as any other sin they might say somebody else is committing. I try to love everybody”. Queen shit.

But as queer aesthetics have themselves finally gained mainstream acceptance, celebrity queerbaiting has become a more pervasive problem. And the allyship required, and expected, of popstars, has deepened. Writing for Bitch Media about allegations of queerbaiting directed towards Harry Styles, journalist Elly Belle describes how the notion of queerbaiting is itself a product of modern relationships to celebrity and celebrity culture created by the prevalence of social media. Today, fans can engage with celebrities like never before, developing deeper parasocial relationships through apps like Instagram, TikTok and Twitter that create an artificial sense of closeness between celebrities and their fanbases. But with greater closeness also comes a greater sense of entitlement. Contrasting Styles with artists of previous generations known for their allyship like Dolly Parton, Madonna, and Janet Jackson, Belle notes that Styles’ core audience skews much younger, explaining that, “younger audiences don’t just want performers who see and welcome them. They want performers who are them—artists who understand the queer experience because they are queer, and they’re here to reflect audiences back to themselves.”

This causes friction. Undeniably, growing up in the spotlight is difficult, and having a global audience witness every wrong word said in an interview or every drunk video of you resurfaced on the internet can be difficult. Growing up is hard and figuring out what you like and who you are is even harder. Harry Styles is no stranger to this. And his shifting public persona reflects that, progressing from floppy-haired, approachable boy next door (I rewatched the ‘What Makes You Beautiful’ music video as “research” for this article and wow what a ride), to styling himself as a throwback ‘70s soft-rock star, citing Big Star as a musical influence and adopting the squealing guitars and slow crescendoing build-up reminiscent of retro soft-rock on the slow-burning ballads that populate his first album Harry Styles. Such versatility owes not only to Styles’ undeniable talent but also a successful promotional strategy on the part of his team, and when each of these aesthetic choices seemed genuine, it was fine.

But it wasn’t until 2019 that Harry Styles discovered the fisheye lens and wide-leg trousers. His appearance at the 2019 Met Ball dressing appropriately to the “camp” theme turned heads first. Then, his song ‘Lights Up’, from his follow-up album ‘Fine Line’ was coined a ‘bisexual anthem’ by many for its accompanying video, released on National Coming Out Day 2019, which featured a large group of people of all genders and expressions stroking Styles’ body and touching each other. And then, in 2020, Styles appeared on the November cover of Vogue wearing a Gucci gown, and the internet nearly exploded. Hostile attacks were levelled at Styles by conservative pundits and organizations who used a fashion editorial shoot as an excuse to make baseless arguments about the endangerment of modern masculinity. As Andre Wheeler, writing for The Guardian, pointedly recognized, “If this is the furore a white, cis man wearing a dress on Vogue breeds, it is hard to imagine what a model from a marginalized background – say, a trans woman of colour (which Vogue has yet to feature on its cover) – would face”.

This is where the queerbaiting accusations towards Harry Styles intensify, and I agree that it’s hard to ignore them. Whether done maliciously or not, the liberties Harry Styles gets away with taking when commodifying queer aesthetics owe entirely to his being a conventionally attractive, cisgender, presumably straight, white man, cemented in the minds of many as the cutest member of a squeaky clean industry manufactured boy band, who is now seen as ‘expressing himself.’ Importantly, Styles has never labelled his own sexuality, although many are quick to note that he has only ever publicly dated womxn, and I don’t think it’s his responsibility to do so. Who you date is your business.

However, picking and choosing particular styles, symbols, or motifs historically pioneered by the queer community to suddenly incorporate into your own public persona without acknowledging the LGBTQIA+ and BIPOC activists before you, who paid the price for their identities with public ridicule, imprisonment, or in some cases, their lives, is blatantly disrespectful. Adopting the aesthetics of a marginalized community for the purposes of furthering your own brand and then ignoring people’s follow-up questions about your behavior is textbook gaslighting. And Styles is guilty of feigning ignorance when this subject inevitably arises, explaining to The Guardian in 2019 when promoting ‘Fine Line’, “I want things to look a certain way. Not because it makes me look gay, or it makes me look straight, or it makes me look bisexual, but because I think it looks cool. And more than that, I dunno, I just think sexuality’s something that’s fun. Honestly? I can’t say I’ve given it any more thought than that.”

Give it more thought, Harry. Please. Because you can be an ally without co-opting an entire community for shock value. As Andre Wheeler argues, “It becomes obvious there is more capital to be gained from wearing the queer activism of the moment like a costume than actually living and embodying it.” I worry that in this case that that observation proves to be unfortunately true. Whether Styles’ queer-positive public persona is a promotional strategy or a legitimate personal epiphany, his actions, and his silence, have consequences. No one is entitled to an explicit label from Harry Styles regarding his sexual orientation or gender expression. But they are entitled to an acknowledgement from Styles that he is an active and willing participant in executing the persona he and his team have created for himself, the profitability he enjoys by borrowing from the queer community, and the privilege he wields while doing so. Ignorance isn’t a good enough answer.