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Jun 25, 20213 min read

Your Body is Yours- Representations of Male Nonconformity in Relation to Fashion in the Media

“Masculinity, like feminine identity, is not defined by an item of clothing, but by the individual and the individual alone.” - Chloe Street.


In recent years the discussion of self-expression and gender nonconformity in relation to fashion has been prevalent. As the Evening Standard Fashion Editor Chloe Street perfectly summarized, gender fluidity and non-binary fashion have become a more frequent feature within the media. Not too long ago, British singer Harry Styles made headlines for being featured on the December 2020 issue of US Vogue wearing women’s clothing, sparking more debates surrounding gender conformity and masculinity. Photographed by Tyler Mitchell wearing various garments created by designers such as Gucci and Comme des Garçons, Styles expressed his views on masculinity within fashion;


“When you take away ‘there’s clothes for men and there’s clothes for women’, once you remove any barriers, obviously you open up the arena in your own life, you’re just limiting yourself. There’s so much joy to be had in playing with clothes.”


However, in the aftermath of the US Vogue release backlash was expressed by the likes of Candace Owens who criticized the use of feminine clothing on Styles, suggesting that ‘there is no society that can survive without strong men’.


It is with these criticisms that the topic of male gender nonconformity should be investigated and how it has been represented within the media. However, despite Styles’ feature being a monumental moment for US Vogue, as he was the first-ever male cover star, he was not the first male celebrity to be photographed breaking the traditional masculine fashion rules.


When Styles’ US Vogue cover was released many commented on its connection to a similar concept explored by Brad Pitt for the Rolling Stone magazine in 1999. Photographed by Mark Seliger, Pitt was featured wearing a vast array of women’s dresses ranging from a 1960s inspired mini-dress to a pink sequined dress, posing in comical, yet editorial stances. As journalist Chris Heath noted when interviewing both Pitt and Seliger, the two chose the pieces themselves as they wanted to pick things;


“That we thought would be not particularly kitsch, but extremely bold and weird.” (Seliger)


Pitt equally agreed that fashion should not be taken so seriously and that gender conformity was just a concept that should be challenged. In order to understand the exploration of male fashion nonconformity within Styles’ US Vogue cover, one should realize that a pathway had already been created through other magazines, such as the Rolling Stone, and recognize that, for Vogue, this was a long overdue feature. Cultural historian Fenella Hitchcock noted that;


“It’s Vogue being quite slow to respond to a shift that’s already happened towards less rigid approaches to categorising fashion.”


But the momentum of the representation of male nonconformity within fashion did not stop at Brad Pitt. In October 2019, singer Pharrell Williams was the cover star of GQ’s ‘The New Masculinity Issue’, where he was featured wearing a yellow Moncler coat and discussed his views on gender and fashion. Editor in chief of GQ, Will Welch interviewed Williams asking for his take on the new trend of challenging traditional masculinity within fashion and Williams had a lot to express. Williams stated;


“All I knew was, it’s going to look amazing and I think that’s the new masculinity. Having the willingness to just be. Just live and let live. I mean how f***ing insecure must you be, as a human being; that because you are uncomfortable with doing something, somebody else shouldn’t be able to do it? I don’t accept that. That’s unacceptable to me.”


From this Williams is conveying what has been on the minds of the younger generation, in particular, which is that no one should inflict their own projections of rigid conformity onto others who wish to express their own self-identities through their clothing.


Through the reflections of various magazine covers featuring the rejection of traditional masculinity through clothing, it is evident that more progress is still yet to come when exploring gender fluidity and nonconformity and it should be celebrated when one chooses to express themselves in whatever clothing they desire.


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