Olivia Wilde Upstages Harry Styles by Wearing Loose Clothes
The sanity of his fandom hangs by a thread as pregnancy rumors fly
Harry Styles’s third album Harry’s House was released this past weekend, a light and joyful celebration of love and sex, carefree kissing, and boilerplate descriptions of women that cannot factually be matched to any woman he may or may not be dating. It should have been a period of celebration for Styles, who capped off the week of promo with a concert at the UBS Arena, but unfortunately his wonderful weekend was violently upstaged by paparazzi photos of Olivia Wilde in New York City.
Boo! Look at her! Standing around in a loose-fitting white t-shirt and baggy pants. What the fuck!!!
As we all know, a famous person “cutting a casual figure,” as The Daily Mail says, is code for pregnancy, and these paparazzi shots of the Don’t Worry Darling director are perhaps just unflattering enough to allow room for hysterical speculation as to whether or not she is carrying Styles’s child, redirecting what ought to be good will towards Styles on the release of new music into attention on her, the clearly jealous, clearly attention-hungry, clearly three-to-four months pregnant fake girlfriend of the beloved singer.
Or maybe it’s that no one looks good in a normal outfit waiting for the subway.
It’s possible, if not 100 percent likely, that the paparazzi shots of Wilde in New York were not an attempt to upstage her boyfriend’s success, as hundreds of his fans call for her cancellation for their 10-year age difference (legal for now!), or to spark pregnancy rumors to distract from an ugly forthcoming custody battle with her ex-fiancé. It’s simply that the internet is a dangerous place to be if you’re Olivia Wilde, where at any point someone can dig up a decade-old photo of you with the other villain du jour, Amber Heard, or an old Instagram comment where you say the Friends reunion is your vaccine (disrespectful to, um, people in STEM and, like, the million-plus Americans who died of COVID). She can’t even post a scene from Paweł Pawlikowski’s Cold War without inviting speculation about who the doomed Polish lovers represent in their relationship. Perhaps she cuts such a casual figure when out and about because she has no idea what happens to the Harry Styles fandom every time she does a menial thing — or maybe she really is a conniving, selfish she-dog. Seems tough, at least for some, to make the distinction.
By Sunday, Wilde and Styles were headed to the airport together, her in a decidedly less baggy outfit and him in some adorable little get-up. If she looked pregnant on Saturday, she looked decidedly not pregnant the following day, laying to rest all the mania. Until she decides to do something else that bucks up against 17-year-old fans’ made-up idea of what the girlfriend of a pop star should be, and then it’ll start all over again.
