Billy Porter is also not a fan of Harry Styles‘ appearance on the 2020 Vogue cover.
Porter claimed in an interview with The Telegraph that he believed Styles received the first male cover because he is “white and he’s straight.”
“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,” he said.
Porter also added that ahead of the cover’s drop, editor-in-chief Anna Wintour had interviewed him, asking for direction in which way to lead Vogue. “That bitch 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,” he said.
Porter revealed that he had urged Wintour to “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.”
Porter has already voiced his disapproval of Styles’ Vogue cover, claiming that it wasn’t intended as a hit at the musician. Harry Styles is the person you’re going to try and use to represent this new conversation, but I’m not dragging him into it. He just does it because it’s the right thing to do, and he doesn’t care.
“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.”
