British pop star Harry Styles has been making a habit out of helping fans come out at his concerts.
At Wednesday’s sold-out stop on Styles’ Love on Tour show at the Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee, a video captured McKinley McConnell holding up a sign that read, “My mom is in Section 201. Help me come out.”
McConnell, 23, was standing near the stage when the “Golden” singer turned the microphone toward her and asked, “What would you like to tell your mother?”
“Do you want me to tell her?” Styles can be heard asking. “I can tell her. Yeah, no problem, one second.”
Hustling over to the center of the stage, the singer shouted, “Lisa, she’s gay!” as thunderous cheers filled the 17,000-person arena.
McConnell flew in from Los Angeles to see the show with her family, who were seated in a different section.
She posted the exchange early Thursday on Twitter, calling it “a moment that will actually be with me forever.”
“Thank you for creating a safe place for me. thank you for letting me grow alongside you as a fan,” she wrote. “Thank you for helping me know who I am. Thank you. @Harry_Styles #LoveOnTourMilwaukee #LoveOnTour #SHESGAY”
McConnell later tweeted that she was “texting my tattoo artist to see how i can get that entire interaction tattooed on me.”
Fans on Twitter responded to the heartwarming clip with words of support.
“As someone who doesn’t know if she’ll ever be out to her parents, this whole interaction was heartwarming and made me cry,” one commenter wrote. “I am so proud of you and happy for you. Hugs xx”
Styles’ concerts have become something of a safe space for young LGBTQ fans: Last month, he helped another young woman come out as bisexual at his show at Connecticut’s Mohegan Sun Arena.
The unnamed audience member held a sign reading “help me come out” and gave Styles her bisexual Pride flag to hold.
“When I raise this flag, you’re officially out,” Styles told the audience. “I’ve heard that’s how it works.”
In July 2018, he helped a super fan named Grace come out to her mother.
Grace was attending Styles’ concert in San Jose, California — her 10th that summer — and brought a poster that read, “I’m gonna come out to my parents because of you!”
Styles saw the poster and, with Grace’s blessing, did the job for her: After asking for her mother’s name he shouted, “Tina, she’s gay!”
Tina was in her hotel room at the time, but when mother and daughter were reunited, she told Grace, “YES I DO LOVE YOU AND YOU CAN BE WHOEVER YOU WANT TO BE,” a tweet from the then-18-year-old said.
“[Harry’s] a proud supporter of the LGBTQ+ community and he’s made a lot of fans feel comfortable and proud to be who they are and I’m just one example of that,” Grace told BuzzFeed News shortly after the encounter.
That same summer, Styles donated proceeds from a limited edition T-shirt to GLSEN, a nonprofit group that advocates for LGBTQ students.
He’s waved the rainbow flag and the transgender Pride flag at other shows and, in Philadelphia, borrowed a fan’s “Make America Gay Again” banner.
“I want to make people feel comfortable being whatever they want to be,” Styles said of waving the LGBTQ banners in a 2019 Rolling Stone cover story. “Maybe at a show you can have a moment of knowing that you’re not alone.”
In November 2017, Styles told fans at a Stockholm show, “If you are Black, if you are white, if you are gay, if you are straight, if you are transgender — whoever you are, whoever you want to be — I support you.”
He’s also been known to push the boundaries of the gender binary in fashion, wearing a sheer black, frilly blouse and pearl earrings to the Met Gala in 2019 and donning a lacy Gucci dress for the December 2020 cover of Vogue.
“It’s like anything — anytime you’re putting barriers up in your own life, you’re just limiting yourself,” he told Vogue at the time. “There’s so much joy to be had in playing with clothes. I’ve never really thought too much about what it means — it just becomes this extended part of creating something.”
Most recently, Styles dressed in drag as Dorothy from “The Wizard of Oz” in a Halloween-inspired Instagram post.
Labeled “Harryween,” the post received more than 6.7 million likes since Sunday, including from Gucci creative director Alessandro Michele and Harris Reed, one of Styles’ go-to designers.
Paul Roberts, choreographer for Styles’ “Treat People With Kindness” video, commented, “Harry, I have a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.”
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