Billy Porter Responds to Controversy Over Oscars Gown: “It’s Not About You”
March 1, 2019Pose actor Billy Porter has responded to the controversary surrounding his Oscar’s gown. Speaking to the Associated Press he told people to mind their own business.
“If you don’t like it, go somewhere else. You don’t have to look. It’s not about you. I don’t understand why my putting on a dress causes this much strife in your life,” he said.
“The comments are not my business. What people think about what I’m doing is not my business. I lived that already.
“I’m inside of my authenticity and the whole point is that you have to respect me as much as I respect you.”
Porter’s gown was designed by Christian Sirianoand was meant to make a bold, political statement about black masculinity: “It goes all the way back to the earliest of emasculations, which is slavery, so the only way to sort of overcome that is to be the strongest and the most masculine and the most powerful and now, [that] has become toxic. And I don’t think it’s just black people. I think it’s men in general. Every ethnicity has their version of it,” Porter said.