24
8 DAYSscene & Heard
Is It Possible
To Have A
Man Crush
On (^) HARRY
STYLES?
We attended the star’s recent
press conference hours before
his gig at The Star Theatre so we
could answer that question.
Have you ever felt so overwhelmed by young
hormonal women that you forget, for a brief
moment, that you’re a heterosexual man? This was
what happened to me at Harry Styles’s recent press
conference at The Star Theatre, where the British
heartthrob was to have his concert — the only Southeast
Asian stop of his debut solo tour — later that night.
I was here to find out what all the fuss for Harry, who
has 22 million Instagram followers (that’s the population
of Taiwan), was about. The 30 eager-faced teen girls who
had camped outside The Star Theatre a good five hours
before the concert were clearly in too deep. Some carried
rainbow flags (‘cos Harry waved one in support of gay
pride at his San Francisco concert in September) while
others wore T-shirts with his mug on it. This amount of
fanfare was expected ’cos the 23-year-old is the most
popular member of One Direction aka the world’s biggest
boyband after all. But for a non-fan like myself, the only
reason I thought him to be more than a pretty face was
’cos he was in Dunkirk.
Which brings me to this: I would have asked Harry
about his experience working with the great Chris
Nolan but his management had made the press con
into a highly-regulated affair. That means no phones,
no photos, no recordings, no speaking directly to Harry.
(P/S: We hope we were allowed to look him in the
eye.) All questions had to be submitted beforehand for
approval and they were to be asked only by the host,
987 jock Gerald Koh. Hmm, were they worried someone
would ask him about the time he dated Taylor Swift?
Making my way to the venue of the press con,
located a few floors above the theatre, I overheard other
journos talking about how a middle-aged woman had