Rebel Rebel |harry styles| - ongoing

THIRTY-SIX

P!nk: Don't Let Me Get Me

Harry

It has been exactly 24 hours since the interview and photoshoot I did with Vogue was published online and I banned myself from looking at the general response. Essie didn't understand why I did that, and if I'm being honest the idea did seem a bit strange, but I was deadly afraid of the hate.

"Can you look? I don't think I can do it.", I asked her over breakfast.

After being silent for seven minutes, which I counted, she said that it's not all bad. I thought she'd said that it wasn't bad at all, but she repeated 'not all bad'.

"What do you mean?", the iPad was in her hand and she wouldn't hand it to me.

"First tell my why you're afraid, and why you took internet privileges from yourself for the past day..."

"I'm afraid of the hate, but not for myself... I can handle it and I'm at that point in my life that I don't really care what some no name nobody says about me.", Essie was clearly confused, "I am afraid for that boy that loves wearing dresses but is embarrassed when he gets teased, because if he saw the photos and loved them then he surely saw the hate I got, he read all the names people called me and he's probably thinking to himself that he'll get hated on too.".

"Baby that's very thoughtful, but I can assure you that for every hateful comment there were tens of supportive ones. What's more, a conservative American author went on a rant about manly men – I think you are incredibly manly by the way, just in case you were wondering – and the reactions on Twitter and Instagram have been incredible. There were probably hundreds of men posting photos of themselves in dresses, other public figures defending you and even more fans."

"Are you serious?", she put the iPad down and came over to sit in my lap.

"I am deadly serious. The internet is sometimes a very dark place because everyone has the right to state their opinion, however wrong it might be... but it's also a light place full of support and incredibly positive energy. I know you must check it out for yourself, and you're free to do so, just remember that it's not worth getting upset over. They are petty little souls that have nothing better to do with their lives and it shows.", it helped to be surrounded by positive and uplifting people, from Essie and Jeff to my family – they all had my back 100%.

I read through the responses, they were mainly messages of support that expressed the pride my fans felt when they saw the interview and the cover. The positive outweighed the negatives, but it still bothered me that some people felt it their right to comment on others' appearance and style. Who gave them the permission to shit on somebody just for what they were wearing? It was one thing to comment on someone's outfit with your friends, but it was an entirely different thing to publicly demand the return of 'manly men' and state your disdain for those that chose to be different.

Essie

I found it extremely hard not to share the response to the Vogue interview with Harry, simply because there were so many nice and kind messages... his fans were so proud of him for freeing his true sense of self and experimenting with fashion. Fashion was there to be experimented with, it wasn't something to be ashamed of and it certainly didn't have to be tied to your sexuality. Harry used to be a plain dresser, he used to be ashamed of wearing anything feminine in public and it wasn't because he thought it was too feminine for him to be seen in – it was because the world thought like that.

"It's okay. I saw many videos, read so many tweets and I spoke to Jeff who told me I had nothing to be worried about.", Harry resurfaced from the loft after two hours, "I did see some troubling posts made by my fans, attacking the conservatives that shared their disgust and I really didn't like that.".