Candace Owens has things to say about 'manly men', whatever that means. | Source: (i) REUTERS/Benoit Tessier, (ii) Charles Sykes/Invision/AP
When it comes to Harry Styles, conservative commentator Candace Owens is proudly strong and wrong.
After getting dragged for her life by celebrities and One Direction fans alike, Owens doubled down on her assertions about the aspiring actor and former teen heart-throb by asserting that he is, in fact, “not a real man,” whatever that means.
I’m not sure what it is about Styles that offends her conservative sensibilities, but here we are.
As a conservative commentator, you would think that Candace Owens would be offended by such things as political corruption (as demonstrated by Lindsey Graham ) or the rampant cronyism in Trump’s political career .
Instead, what is she concerned about? Harry Styles in a dress on the cover of Vogue Magazine.
And, as usual, Candace Owens is absolutely wrong.
Leaving aside the question of binary vs. non-binary assignments of gender , men outside of “Western” civilization — in other words, “the East” that she’s referring to — wear skirts and dress-like garments to this day without concern about appearing “less masculine” than their Western counterparts. Men in Samoa wear a lavalava , while men in sub-Saharan Africa wear khanga . Muslim men wear ihram during their annual hajj to Mecca, while men in southern India wear lunghi . All of these outfits are what the West would consider “skirts,” and all are “dress-like” in their appearance, yet not one of these men are considered “less than manly” because of it.
So what, exactly, is the problem with Harry Styles in a dress, again?
Despite the backlash for attacking Harry Styles, Candace Owens subsequently tweeted that she’s “not sorry” for attacking him.
This isn’t the first time that Owens has attacked celebrities for no reason, and it certainly isn’t going to be the last. And why would it? She becomes a trending topic each time she does it.
But it’s high time we do what Harry Styles does each time a “hater” comes out against him for his life choices: put them on ignore. The Trumpian era of reveling in deliberate ignorance and equating it to true intelligence needs to be put behind us, once and for all — and Candace Owens needs to be the first voice relegated to history’s dustbin.