Soft Power
How pop star Zayn Malik is rebuilding the modern Muslim man in an age of Islamophobia.
“Have you seen Zayn?” My friend, Sara, messaged me a few months ago. It was the summer and I’d been on Tumblr, my newsfeed virtually a photographic exploration of the ex-One Direction superstar. I knew exactly what she was referencing: when Zayn walked past the cameras at a Louis Vuitton show, sporting newly shaved platinum-blonde hair and a silk floral shirt with a brocaded “Louis Vuitton” stretched across his chest, like a banner. Before Zayn’s departure from the monochromatic boyband lifestyle, he was a poster boy for on trend. Now, all of the sudden, he was an eccentric. Every action filled with a resoluteness that comes naturally with mapping your own destiny. This Zayn, this handsome Gary Busey-esque creature of well-timed defiance, conquered all questions of masculinity, and its servile definitions.
The cruel abstraction of masculinity is that men must be macho, unfeeling; devoid of emotional truth and honesty. Essentially, men who aren’t real. Zayn is a new breed of male. Soft-spoken and mysterious, with a gentle repose, Zayn is both a heartthrob and an idealist. People tend to…
