Soraya Roberts | Longreads | August 2019 | 9 minutes (2,273 words)
I have no reason not to believe Rolling Stone when it calls cover star Harry Styles a "21st century rock star." He certainly looks like one: shirtless, tattooed, his hair a tousled mess, and a smile that may not say big dick energy but definitely says he knows what to do with it. He could be 1977 cover star Peter Frampton, when he was named "Rock Star of the Year." There's even a tagline to the left of Styles's nipple promising sex and psychedelics. But then you start reading, and the setup begins to break down. Sure, he has a reputation for fucking a lot, but it all sounds very consensual and age-appropriate. He also seems unfailingly polite, not to mention sunny. I mean, he gets sad — his new album is "all about having sex and feeling sad" — but he's not broody and doesn't seem like he'd ever trash a hotel. This is a guy who appears to sort his problems out the way therapists tell us to: friendships, meditation, even work. "I feel like the fans have given me an environment to be myself and grow up and create this safe space to learn and make mistakes," he tells the magazine. He describes himself as vulnerable and loose (the mushrooms and weed can't hurt). Rolling Stone describes one moment as "rock-star debauchery" but all he did while tripping was bite off the tip of his own tongue — the only person he bled on was himself. As for everyone else, he just wants them to feel loved. "I'm aware that as a white male, I don't go through the same things as a lot of the people that come to the shows," he says. "I'm just trying to make people feel included and seen."
The classic ideal of the rock star — the depraved renegade with infinite hotel bills, addictions, and infidelities — is dead. The charismatic young white man (it was usually a young white man, sometimes several) who rebranded selfishness as revolution has been overthrown, taking with him a part of the individualist, white, patriarchal capitalist system he came from. In his place, new rock stars, sometimes white and male, often not, have sprung up to nurture rather than destroy — instead of shutting us out, they let us in. Read more of this post
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