Billy Porter Slams Harry Styles’ Gender-Neutral Vogue Cover: ‘You’re Using My Community’

variety.com:

McKinley Franklin editor Billy Porter is sharing his distaste with Harry Styles’ 2020 Vogue cover. In an interview with The Telegraph, Porter explained that he felt Styles landed the first male cover because he’s “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 previously expressed his dislike of Styles’ Vogue cover, sharing in the past that it wasn’t a personal dig against the artist. “I’m not dragging Harry Styles, but he is the one you’re going to try and use to represent this new conversation?