High fashion exists outside the realm of practicality. Unwearable, extravagant garments that border on absurdity have earned haute couture a reputation for being unnecessarily weird. It can seem so bizarre because most runway designers treat fashion as an art and attempt to be creators of something revolutionary. Typically, the model is chosen based on the concept of the clothes but in some cases, the model is the concept and the clothes are chosen after. 

This order of events occurs especially in celebrity magazine features; the costume designer dresses the subject to best reflect their personal identity, as a painter would intricately detail their muse’s facial expressions to best capture the nuances of their character. In these cases, the focus is taken off of the desire to introduce radically new concepts and is instead placed on highlighting the beauty of the person’s genuine nature. 

Pop culture icon Harry Styles, a former member of the hugely successful boy band One Direction and current solo musical artist and actor, made Vogue history on Nov. 13 as the first male model to grace the magazine’s cover solo. He did so donning a ruffled, lacy periwinkle blue gown paired with a tuxedo jacket, both designed by Gucci. 

The photoshoot features more statement pieces including a blazer and kilt by Comme des Garçons Homme Plus, Falke socks, and brogues from The Contemporary Wardrobe Collection, a Victorian crinoline with pink tool layered on top, and 1980s inspired shoulder pads under a zoot-suit. Styles is also pictured in custom-made corduroy pants by Emily Adams Bode with hand-painted emblems to symbolize aspects of Harry’s life. A robin bird is illustrated on the back of the pants to represent Styles’ step-dad, Robin, who passed away from cancer in 2017.

The androgynous style choices came as no surprise to fans; Styles has somewhat become the millennial face for gender-neutral fashion over the years. In an interview with the Guardian, the 26-year-old expressed, “What women wear. What men wear. For me, it’s not a question of that… If I see a nice shirt and get told ‘But it’s for ladies.’ I think: Okaaaay? Doesn’t make me want to wear it less though… I think the moment you feel more comfortable with yourself, it all becomes a lot easier.”

The Vogue cover, or rather Styles’ choice of dress, attracted equal amounts of backlash as it did praise. Conservative author and commentator Candace Owens emerged as the opposition’s leader, unleashing a series of critical social media posts that quickly went viral. 

“There is no society that can survive without strong men,” Owens tweeted in response.

“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,” she added. “It is an outright attack. Bring back manly men.” 

Her statements garnered support from right-wing peer Ben Shapiro among others: “Anyone who pretends that it is not a referendum on masculinity for men to don floofy dresses is treating you as a full-on idiot.”

Evidently, the controversy takes on a partisan form in adult society. Owens and Shapiro, the champions of the conservative cause, blame not necessarily Harry Styles for breaking the gender binary, but “the weird, perverted will of the left” as the driving force behind a deliberate attack on America’s cultural understanding of masculinity. Defenders of the singer and style choice are typically associated with liberal ideology and attribute the public retaliation to the “sensitiv[ity] to examining and exploring gender roles in society,” as described by democratic Congresswoman Alexandria-Ocasio Cortez. The debate has streamlined into a clash between the two opposing sides of the political spectrum, each condemning the other’s agenda. 

In Cresskill High School, however, the issue’s most stark division is not in politics, but gender. 

Made up entirely of thirteen to eighteen-year-olds, the majority of the population has only begun to explore their political identities. Some express no involvement at all: the results of a survey distributed through all grade levels reveals that nearly one-third, or 28.2% of students within the sample size of 80 are undecided or have no interest in politics. The remaining numbers display no truly dominant party, though the most commonly recorded affiliation is left-leaning at 39.7%, but that may be due to the survey’s subject matter piquing a particularly resonant interest.

Polling the student body’s political affiliations made it clear that above anything else, the general consensus on politics is: confused. Unsure. That can be expected from an adolescent population.

An exponentially more definite distinction emerged between the genders. A whopping 90% of females and 100% (of 1) of gender-fluid people defended Harry Styles while only 40% of males did. It could be reasonably inferred that the majority 60% would group together in opposition, but there was no unity among males under any answer; those surveyed were fairly spread between opposing, neutral, and contradictory views. 

The almost unanimous agreement of females to defend Styles represents an apparently gender-wide acceptance of nonbinary fashion thats meaning goes deeper than the surface. 

Sophomore and Harry Styles fan Veronica Kochlatyi weighs in on why she thinks female students are more likely to defend the singer than male students. “… [females] are more comfortable with accepting everyone as they are. Women don’t see the whole toxic masculine idea of a man needing to act a certain way, we just accept them.” 

Toxic masculinity is a hot-button term that often sparks offense when misunderstood. It is the adherence to male gender roles that extend beyond the standard dress code to the stigma surrounding emotional expression and weakness that promotes aggression, domination, and homophobia. This concept of manhood is encouraged especially in Western society and limits men to behavior that maintains that status. At the risk of deviation, it can lead to men and boys feeling like failures at being men. 

“I feel like especially in our age, boys tend to have a constructed viewpoint on what is too feminine and how they should act. Whether it is taught to them by parents or it’s just their own opinions, boys tend to have a very clear cut view on being a man and tend to not accept those who want to be more feminine,” Kochlatyi elaborates. 

The lack of male solidarity in the data extracted from the survey suggests that male students may individually be struggling with their definitions of masculinity and are as unsure about them as with their political identities, suggesting a correlation between the two. 

A male student who requested anonymity views the same aforementioned traditional male gender roles Kochlatyi commented on in a positive light. “Parts of masculinity include being physically strong, capable, a leader, courageous, assertive.” 

“I personally find the whole dress wearing thing very unnatural and thus I dislike it. I think it is pretty obvious that he is trying to appear less masculine (the opposite of masculinity is donning a dress and making yourself look like a woman).”

This is the core of the argument against gender-fluid fashion; that it goes against the laws of nature. That interpretation is founded on the belief that fashion should or does directly correlate to biological sex, rendering clothes inherently male or female. Historically proven, however, the social rules that govern what men and women should wear are ever-fluctuating. The modern woman freely wears any form of pants ranging from jeans to sweats thanks to the heavily resisted, explosive introduction of women in pants in the 20th century. First popularized by women’s rights activists, “By the 1920s and 30s, celebrities like Marlene Dietrich dared to wear full pant suits to movie premieres… and the ‘most daring thing about Katharine Hepburn’ was her pants,” according to Yahoo Lifestyle’s The History of Women Wearing Pants as a Power Symbol. Emma McClendon, associate costume curator at The Museum at The Fashion Institute of Technology in New York, “points out that as celebrities, both of those women could get away with wearing androgynous looks without repercussions, while ordinary women elsewhere would have been fined.” Harry Styles is the modern-day equivalent of Marlene Dietrich and Katherine Hepburn pioneering the normalization of nonbinary fashion- this time, with men in dresses. 

In 2020, by immediate association, images of women in suits conjure up one word: powerful. They are even the expected attire in professional settings- a staple in female politicians, supermodels, corporate and businesswomen’s wardrobes. This drastic attitude change now rewards women by lending them power and toughness as long as they don a symbol associated with manhood’s most desirable characteristics. In the same sense, condemning men in dresses and skirts as morally degraded and weak reflects more about cultural attitudes towards women than it does appreciation for men. 

“I want to make it clear that I don’t want people to go and harass this guy, but we definitely shouldn’t be encouraging people to follow what he is doing, undermining traditional and natural ideals,” the anonymous male student concludes. 

Sophomore Christian Centeno, a self-proclaimed Harry Styles fan and fashion enthusiast, offered a contrasting male perspective on the subject. He expressed that he does not oppose the singer’s dress-wearing but does not go out of his way to defend him. 

“Nowadays the world is changing and men wearing skirts for fashion magazines is the least surprising thing to me.” 

“To me what defines masculinity are the traits which make a certain guy himself rather than what the rest of the public thinks about that person. For example, if a guy paints his nails black and listens to Harry Styles because it makes him him, he isn’t less masculine than someone who lifts everyday and listens to heavy metal. Traditionally, most associate masculinity with ‘being tough’ and such, so I guess each person may have their own opinion on this topic.”

Presented here are two male perspectives that could not be more different. They exist on the opposite ends of the ideological spectrum amidst a sea of respondents that contradicted their own statements and seemed indifferent in their neutrality or even in defense of Styles, illustrating just how much variation exists within the male student body’s understanding of masculinity in Cresskill High School. Despite that overwhelming division, the opposers constitute the most solidified group.

The disparity between female and male students still does not fully answer why females displayed such overwhelming unity in Harry Styles’ defense. Gender-fluid senior Kyle Passorotti proposes another theory additional to Kochlatyi’s on why females are more likely to defend Styles and his fashion choice than not.  

“Women tend to [stereotypically] be held to higher standards when it comes to how they dress. Since I am physically female, I deal with certain gender expectations when it comes to how I present myself (I don’t follow them though)… Many of the women I know are often judged for wearing skirts and dresses because they are either too short or too long. Many of my friends and I are also often criticized for wearing things like tank tops because our chest sizes make us “appear” like we are trying to be provocative when all we want is to wear a tank top.”

Passorotti illuminates the constant scrutiny women face under double standards in society, especially for the way that they dress. The universal experience of navigating the line between being a prude or a slut, being basic or a try-hard, or too big or too thin all exemplify that attaining the perfect balance is impossible. 

“Because of this, I feel that women are more sensitive to criticizing how people dress. They can relate, and people tend to be more sympathetic when they understand.”

The gendered division of Cresskill High School’s student body, at its core, comes down to the rigidity with which gender roles are enforced in young people’s lives. The results may offer insight into students’ future growth into their political identities stemming from these traditional or progessive-leaning values. In any case, at the present moment, the raw numbers indicate that females in this school, beyond defending Harry Styles’ personal style choice, seem to be more accepting of free gender expression than the males. Potential reasons were offered in this analysis to offer some sort of explanation, but none are absolute. The raw numbers implore you to ask yourselves the same question: why?