harry styles isn't interesting; we make him interesting
why everyone seems to love harry styles and why it actually makes no sense
I’m no publicist, but have famous people ever considered just: shutting up? So easy, so simple, yet every single day I see celebrities getting crucified online because they refuse to just be quiet. This is why the most well-liked celebrities are the ones who just *don’t speak*, the “aloof celebrity” if you will. Anya Taylor-Joy, Robert Pattinson, Zendaya all seem to float above the drama and we admire them for it because they simply have chosen not to exist outside of their work.
A personal favorite aloof celebrity of mine is Harry Styles: King of Shutting Up, King of Simply Not Being There, King of Minding the Business That Pays Him. Whenever Harry comes up in conversation I find that people fall into two camps: 1) “Ugh love him!” and 2) “I don’t get it.” As a longtime fan I don’t really have much to say when people tell me they don’t get it, because frankly I don’t get it either! From snarky tweets like “Harry Styles isn’t the ending toxic masculinity king that y’all think he is” to the more concise “go give us nothing”, I would agree that Harry isn’t exactly built different and gets a lot of credit where it most likely isn’t due. I like what he does but he’s not doing much.
I very often ask myself why I and so many others genuinely adore someone so arguably bland, and I think it’s because we’re doing all the work. Harry doesn’t have to be interesting if you, yourself, can just make him interesting, right?
Harry has been famous for almost half his life, and he knows exactly how to do so in a way that works for him and his fans. He’s on the whole likable and hard to hate because there’s not much to critique. This lack of substance isn’t an accident.
In a post-One-Direction and post-Larry world, it seems that Harry lives his public and private life on his own terms. When he was younger, he was constantly having his boundaries crossed due to the astronomical success of the band. Going solo gave him a chance to renegotiate his relationship with his fans, from one where things were almost always taken too far to one where the few and vague details of his private life are very very hard to take far at all.
In Harry Styles: Behind the Album (my favorite piece of cinema I think), Harry talks about that lack of privacy specifically. That after the band he no longer wanted people to know everything about him, and at the time he’d gotten to that place and he really enjoyed and valued it. That interview was almost 5 years ago (crying, throwing up, screaming), and this sums up how Harry has navigated his solo career, his celebrity status, up to this point. But how can one celebrity be this withholding and still achieve such massive success and wide approval from the general public?
Like I said, Harry Styles is the King of Shutting Up. He’s agreeable. For Harry, neutrality is the name of the game in more ways than one. Harry can say Black Lives Matter, but it’s not like he’s made his stance so overt that he alienates every single person who doesn’t agree. Harry can wear a dress and give zero context and zero commentary. Anywhere outside of a photoshoot you can find him in a shirt and pants. If you’re really committed to Harry as a traditional masculine and heterosexual ideal then you can easily overlook the brief online discourse that arises when Harry wants to step into a skirt for a bit. Harry makes good, critically-acclaimed music where at best you love his song, it’s a Top 40 Hit, or at worst you’re ambivalent and you skip it. There’s nothing so risky or alternative to make anyone aggressively critical; as a musician he’s not pushing any boundaries.
All this to say, if you want to be a fan of Harry Styles you have the utmost privilege to pick and choose what you’re a fan of. It’s easy to find something you like and easy to ignore the stuff you don’t. He’s a blank slate. Just pretty enough—Not a Chalamet, but not so polarizing as a Davidson either. Just talented enough—He’s a great musical act, with solid albums, with solid writing, but he doesn’t over perform in any one category e.g. Taylor Swift as a writer. Just fit enough—Not “too skinny” yet not muscular to the point of a male gaze-y nightmare. Just political enough—We can make some probable assumptions for Harry’s politics, but either way he’s not loud about any specific values or causes—well—except for “kindness”.
This is one point that I want to make overtly clear: Neutrality, in this specific context, doesn't need to be labeled good or bad. We can critique Harry for his apparent ambivalence all we want, but we can also ask ourselves how exactly a celebrity like Harry can advocate for these causes? Would statements and donations be good enough? If he were to do more than that, would we even want him taking up space in movements for marginalized groups he’s not part of? Why do we ask, even beg, for famous people to be advocates or allies at all? (I’ll do some further writing about this.)
There are nuances e.g. Though Harry is a neutral figure politically, “neutral” is a relative term. For the majority of his fan base Harry could be quite a radical figure to look to, blurring ideas of gender or sexuality. However, to any fan with a marginalized identity or two, he doesn’t stick out as radical or political at all. If I were in the whole Harry thing for his politics then I wouldn’t be in it at all. A consistent White Boy of the Month being a decent person can only blow my mind so much.
This is all fine. How we engage with Harry as the neutral figure he is points to this idea that a lot of different people love Harry Styles, but it doesn’t seem like we’re all loving the same person for the same reasons.
This phenomenon that is Harry Styles seems to be based around a person who doesn’t actually exist? There is no Harry Styles in the way that there is a Taylor Swift—this is my second time bringing up Taylor. Yes, the two are separate people and misogyny probably plays a role, but I’m comparing them on the basis that they are both mega-famous musical acts who are fairly private at this moment in time. They both have fan bases that have created collective identities for and opinions on them. For both, these opinions range wildly, but opinions on Taylor seem grounded in a shared knowledge—think All Too Well/Jake Gyllenhaal or the specific moment in her career when she decided to take a political stance—while opinions on Harry seem based on knowledge that’s more ambiguous—think how it’s not easily agreed upon who Harry writes about in 95% of his songs or that he rarely gives insight into his thought processes when choosing brands to work with or causes to support. Most of the things that you “know” about Harry you didn’t hear from him.
Regardless of a shaky knowledge base, a lot of people have a lot to say about Harry. There’s as much discourse, opining, and stanning as there would be for any other big celebrity when it seems like Harry doesn’t publicly say or do half as much as his contemporaries. In fact, when Harry isn’t promoting an album or touring he effectively disappears from the public eye, his already sparse socials going radio silent (these time periods affectionately called “hroughts” by fans iykyk). Most other celebrities try to keep fans updated and engaged, but Harry doesn’t bother to fill the gaps between releasing music and doing anything else. He’s not giving much for people to talk about, but that talk happens anyway. When Harry doesn’t speak about his personal life, his politics, his sexuality, or the company he keeps then we do it for him. It’s fascinating to me how much we have to say about someone who is doing and saying the absolute least.
I’m being drawn to two conclusions: (1) Harry is a rarity of sorts. He’s a rare combination of exceedingly private but also widely obsessed-over. His lack of a distinct public persona and fans’ cult-like adoration don’t necessarily go hand-in-hand. Here are all these things that he doesn’t talk about, but for a lot of other famous people that information is presented as readily available, often coming from the celebrity themselves. Even if it’s not the celebrity’s real truth, there is a shared narrative where most celebrities’ public personas are detailed and agreed upon by their fan bases e.g. Harry Styles and Olivia Wilde don’t present as a couple the way Shawn Mendes and Camila Cabello do (did! oops). The former are seen together but the details of their private lives are iffy at best. The latter publicly talk about one another every chance they get and every plot point of their relationship timeline is chronicled somewhere online.
(2) Harry, as a celebrity, is an exception that should probably be the norm. Maybe it shouldn’t be normal to know (or even want to know) what a celebrity is thinking, who their friends are, what their politics are, or what their sexual preference is. I’m considering each of these pieces of knowledge, and can’t help but notice a stunning lack of boundaries that is built into the general public’s interaction with the famous.
Harry seems to transcend this interaction by being the perfect celebrity and not the perfect person. A lot of celebrities portray their fame as a job that never ends, where they have no control over what they give to an audience and what they don’t. With Harry, I don’t sense that same tension between what he wants to be public and what he wants to be private. Yes, he sees it as a job, but he’s learned how to clock in and out and draw the line. Harry as an on-the-clock celebrity is charismatic and kind and tries to bring his fans as much joy as possible. As an off-the-clock famous person, Harry is unapologetic and intentionally inaccessible, making sure that that line between public and private is never blurry.
Harry’s rareness exposes just how hard it is or at least how uncommon it is for a celebrity to have it all: live a fun and famous life and maintain a “close” relationship with an audience without compromising on privacy or boundaries. Celebrities who try to be perfect people see their person mangled, distorted, and exploited by those who hate them and those who claim to love them. The perfect person they’re trying to be is constantly being tested morally and failing time and time again.
We know and love Harry Styles for the celebrity and the brand and the concept, not for the person. We get to make him interesting, and he gets to keep us interested. Harry keeps the person and we accept and adore the rest. So, for both his and our sake, go Harry and keep giving us nothing.