I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t know what a Harry Styles is/are or if it/they are any good. Is it a cardigan made out of 100% regenerative Peruvian mohair? That sounds nice. Is it the 2010’s era hipster beard making a raging comeback? Skinny jeans are cool again so maybe. Is it a gilly suit? That would be kinda weird. I don’t know and frankly I don’t want to.
But current affairs have required that I become familiar with exactly what a Harry Styles is. After some digging, I’ve learned that it is a pop singer, a thirty-something teenage heartthrob who was slingshot into stardom as part of the Simon Cowell-indebted boy band One Direction, singers of this #1 hit.
A Harry Style has exceptional taste is what I’m trying to say. A Harry Styles is of the people. Which is why when a Harry Styles carps about the cost of coffee to a crowd at Madison Square Garden, the world listens.
And when I say the world listens, I’m talking Reuters, Yahoo, the NY Post, Vice, etc, all of whom are reporting the presumed expert opinion of a Harry Styles. (I was unable to find information about any sort of Styles-based coffee knowledge or experience, but surely it is exists seeing how so many news outlets are feverishly printing his words like they carry any weight.) During his 30-day MSG residency, the estimated quarter-billionaire told the people in attendance that the scariest thing about New York City is the cost of the coffee.
“It’s a cappuccino. It can’t be $10, it can’t be,” adding, “The scariest thing about this Halloween is the price of caffeinated beverages in this city. Astronomical. It’s out of control.” He also doesn’t like tipping.
A Harry Styles is right though. A cappuccino simply can’t cost $10, mostly because, you know, it doesn’t. I asked Sprudge editor and NYC resident Liz Clayton about it and she said six bucks, give or take, is the going rate. There are of course places in NYC and all over the world where you can get a cappuccino and through various upcharges or coffee selections make the price tag reach double digits. But it’s certainly not the majority of cafes, not even in New York City (said in the Pace picante sauce commercial voice). Easily avoidable at the very least. Complaining about buying a $10 cappuccino is like walking into a Rolex store and wondering why all the watches are so damn expensive.
But the sentiment a Harry Styles is getting at is a familiar one. Coffee prices are certainly going up, much like the price of everything else. Now, should the poster boy for the fight against higher coffee prices be the one having to part ways with 0.00000004% of his net worth for a cappuccino? The one for whom six cappuccinos can be traded for a nosebleed in roughly the same zip code as the stage at one of his concerts? Probably not.
It is nonetheless the mantle the Treat People With Kindness sloganeer has taken upon himself. So here’s a few people we can treat with a little kindness: The farmer growing the coffee who has historically been paid less than it costs to produce it due to immorally and artificially deflated coffee prices; the barista who can’t live in the same city as the expensive coffee they are serving unless they’re sharing a studio apartment with enough people to start their own boy band.
And by “treat” I mean “pay” and by “a little kindness” here I mean “a livable wage.” That’s what we should be doing. If a $10 cappuccino is how we get there, then so be it.
Through all this I have learned what a Harry Styles actually is. It’s that boyish grin you give when complaining about having to splice off an atomic layer of your immense wealth in order to enjoy something at a price you don’t actually have to. And it’s the androgyny-coded swagger of saying it to people who paid orders of magnitude more than that cup of coffee—and at a far more significant percentage of their own net worth—just to be near you when you did it.
A Harry Styles is not a look I could pull off. I’ll order an $8 pour-over and throw in a few bucks for a tip and be all the happier for it. Also I don’t have the bone structure. But I think in the end, much like what a Harry Styles so artfully averred all those years ago, that’s what makes me beautiful.
Zac Cadwalader is the managing editor at Sprudge Media Network and a staff writer based in Dallas. Read more Zac Cadwalader on Sprudge.
