The Emmy and Tony-winning actor, 50, opened up about the negative reactions he’s received for his look —tellingPage Six, “If you don’t like it, don’t watch it.”
Backlash towards Porter first began afterSesame Streetshared on-set photos of the star on their social media accounts on Jan. 30.
Porter was filming an episode for the long-running children series’ upcoming 51st season while rewearingthe show-stopping Christian Siriano velvet tuxedo gown he first debuted at the 2019 Oscars. But some viewers found the look offensive.
“Do you approve of your taxpayer dollars being used to promote the radical LGBTQ agenda?” Jason Rapert, a 47-year-old Republican state senator from Arkansas,wrote on Facebook, adding he could pass a bill to “cutoff all funding” to PBS.
“Taxpayer funds should not be used to try and manipulate young children with the political agenda and worldview of LGBTQ activism,” he said,in a follow-up post. “Political interest groups can pay for their own messaging and do as they please, but the hardworking taxpayers of America DO NOT have to pay the bills for your efforts. I object to PBS and AETN rebroadcasting any LGBTQ activist programming using public funds. Not the right time or the right place.”
“Let children be children, and stop trying to force this corrupting and dangerous influence on the youth of America,” the petition states.
In response to the backlash, Porter toldPage Sixhe struggled to understand how critics connected him wearing a dress to “perverted demon sex.”
“Like, what about me singing with a penguin [onSesame Street] has anything to do with what I’m doing in my bedroom?” he asked. “The really interesting thing for me is that that’s what it’s all about when it comes to LGBTQ people — the first thing everyone wants to talk about is how we having sex.”
“Stay out of my bedroom and you will be fine,” Porter continued. “That is none of your business.”
Frazer Harrison/Getty
Porter has made a name for himself in recent years, wearing one unique ensemble after another throughout his time on the red carpet ever since he arrived at the 2019 Golden Globes in an embroidered suit and pink-lined cape.
“As a man, I really want to make a different kind of statement and show up in a way that could also be transformative, that could also be political,” Porter told PEOPLE in September. “My goal was to be a walking piece of political art. When I show up that’s what my goal is. Put a man in a dress and it’s controversial, doesn’t make any sense, but okay. Let’s keep having this conversation until we can change something.”
He credited working on the FX hitPose, a show about New York City underground ballroom culture in the late 1980s, for changing his perspective on his red carpet style.
“I realized how gender fluid my impulses, my whole life has been. I didn’t really understand that untilPosehappened,” he shared. “It kind of cracked my brain open and helped me get to a different space and understating about myself, the dilemmas I was putting on myself even just about what I can wear, what was acceptable, what was masculine enough, what was acceptable.”
“We had no time,” Siriano revealed at the E! Oscars preshow last February. “I fit his stylist’s assistant in this dress because we had no time.”
“It was like, If we were going to do a tuxedo, we can’t just do a tuxedo. It has to be a moment,” he said. “I don’t think any man has ever worn a gown onthe Oscarsred carpet before. He really is the person to do it.”
source: people.com
