Ashley
“People scurry to gather tidbits of information about his life, whether they’re readily shared or not, to try and understand where this creature with the hair and the silver boots came from”.
Gemma Styles, Harry’s older sister, contributed to Harry’s Another Man Magazine debut by giving his fans and Harry himself a look at his life through her own eyes. It was a beautiful message of love and adoration as well as a protective nature from his older sister and she recalled some of their lives together before he packed his bags and never truly came home.
She stars off by saying that her earliest memories of Harry stem back to when he was about 1 and he’d lay on the floor with their puppy Max, whom she helped pick out because of the look in his eyes. Harry would take the dummy from his mouth and put it in Max’s mouth and while he showed a look of confusion, he went with it anyway. Gemma said Harry just has ‘that way about him’.
She moved forward to tell a funny story when Harry tried to get Gemma in trouble by calling her a drug dealer because she told him that WWF Wrestling was staged; it was the most serious personal attack he could come up with at the time.
Gemma says at times she wonders how he entrances people just by being himself, but after taking a moment to think, she simply states that he’s always been that way, now people just get to see it. She says on vacation he’d wow people three times his age and he’d dance in the window while in a carpool line – he’s been an entertainer since he was born, it just wasn’t the world’s knowledge until later on.
When Harry got to secondary school she says it took people a while to recognize their relation, he was outspoken and charismatic while Gemma was quiet and studious. She excelled in academics and says Harry would get frustrated in trying to match her grade for grade and she didn’t point this out to color him flawed, but just to make him more human. Harry seems to make every part of life look effortless and gracious, but it’s not something he takes for granted, it’s a mix of talent and heart and passion that make Harry the larger than life figure that he is; and she got to watch him grow and discover that proudly.
She touches on his love of fashion since he was young. He’d work two early jobs to make enough money to get a train to Manchester to fill his closet. She said he was popular but never boisterous and got on well with everyone. As most of us – again proving how human Harry is – Gemma and Harry both had an ’emo phase’ where Harry attempted to straighten his hair and ultimately ended up letting Gemma cut it into styles he’d be pleased with. She says the skinny jeans just sort of stuck, even after the fad went away.
Another important memory from Gemma spans from the time she left for school and the time Harry became a member of One Direction. She recalls watching the One Direction film and hearing Harry talk about the music that she used to share with him, one of the constant connections the two of them had. She realized then – and when Harry used to sleep in her bed after she left for school – how much she meant to her little brother.
Gemma speaks fondly of Harry’s time from the beginning of The X Factor to when he won the world; he was shy and nervous – something she’d never seen of him – when he was chosen to go through to the televised part of the competition and wouldn’t let anyone hear him practice. Upon making it to London, Gemma had the pleasure of going with him as his mum was busy working and they took on the city together, though he was interested in different things than she was – it was the last big thing the pair had before his overnight stardom; a treasured memory now.
She said Harry noticed another young man he’d spoken to before and she realized then that it was time to leave him, she waited for a call and to pick up her brother, to take him home and return to their normal life but that never happened. His passion, talent, and heart grew and became something people idolized and it never stopped, he never came home. Instead, their life together and their memories became just one part of his incredible story.
The end of her part sums up Harry more perfectly than anyone else ever could; she says Harry may not have won The X Factor, but there’s no denying that he’s golden.
