‘You’re using my community’: Gay actor Billy Porter slams Harry Styles’ Vogue cover again
Pose star Billy Porter has unleashed on Harry Styles and Vogue boss Anna Wintour for the history-making cover featuring the singer.
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Billy Porter slammed Harry Styles’ Vogue cover again — after previously apologising for his initial comments — and called Anna Wintour a “b***h”.
During an interview with the Telegraph published Friday, the Pose star, 53, spoke about his disdain for Vogue using the Watermelon Sugar singer as the face of genderfluid and non-binary fashion back in 2020.
“It’s not Harry Styles’ fault that he happens to be white and cute and straight and fit into the infrastructure that way,” Porter, who is openly gay, said. “I call out the gatekeepers.”
The Cinderella star claimed that the Grammy winner, who has yet to publicly label himself or his sexuality, got the cover because he’s “white and he’s straight”.
“Non-binary blah blah blah blah. No,” Porter continued. “It doesn’t feel good to me. You’re using my community — or your people are using my community — to elevate you.
“You haven’t had to sacrifice anything.”
As for Wintour, 73, Porter said that he spoke to the magazine editor-in-chief about how to use Vogue to push forward the “de-gendering of fashion movement” before Styles, 29, was given the cover.
However, Wintour tapped the Late Night Talking musician, making him the first man to ever cover American Vogue by himself.
“That b***h said to me at the end, ‘How can we do better?’ And I was so taken off guard that I didn’t say what I should have said,” Porter told the UK publication, which was, “Use your power as Vogue to uplift the voices of the leaders of this de-gendering of fashion movement.”
“Six months later, Harry Styles is the first man on the cover.”
Page Six has reached out to Styles and Wintour’s reps but did not immediately hear back.
Porter previously slammed Styles’ historic cover, in which the former One Direction member was dressed in a Gucci gown.
“I changed the whole game,” he told the Sunday Times in October 2021. “And that is not ego, that is just fact. I was the first one doing it and now everybody is doing it.
“I feel like the fashion industry has accepted me because they have to. I’m not necessarily convinced, and here is why: I created the conversation, and yet Vogue still put Harry Styles, a straight white man, in a dress on their cover for the first time.”
The Emmy winner then claimed that he was attacking Vogue and not Styles personally.
“I’m not dragging Harry Styles, but he is the one you’re going to try and use to represent this new conversation?” he asked rhetorically.
“He doesn’t care, he’s just doing it because it’s the thing to do. 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 down. All he has to do is be white and straight.”
The following month, the “Kinky Boots” star issued an apology for his remarks, reiterating that he had no hard feelings against Styles.
“Harry Styles, I apologise to you for having your name in my mouth,” he said on “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” at the time.
“It’s not about you. The conversation is not about you. The conversation is actually deeper than that. It is about the systems of oppression and erasure of people of colour who contribute to the culture.”
This article originally appeared in Page Six and was reproduced with permission
Originally published as ‘You’re using my community’: Gay actor Billy Porter slams Harry Styles’ Vogue cover again
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