First things first; we all know Thug is not the first person to wear some weird shit. He is also not the first to wear something classified outside of gender norms. That being said, we’re not talking about them right now, we’re talking about Thug.

Young Thug, Jeffrey, whatever his name is, needs a long and loud round of applause. Not only did he come out with a tape full of bangers, he covered it with a remarkable shot of him wearing one of the most stunning pieces of clothing I have ever seen (shot by Garfield Larmond @whoisglp).

As expected, everyone has something to say. Amongst the vast array of comments on social medias, a few bits negative feedback on Instagram include “I’m done… I’m deleting all his songs. I hear a song at the club from him I’m walking out that b*tch” “I ain’t buying shit” “gay” “Fagget” spelled as shown, and my personal favorite “fixx it Jesus!” with two x’s. Though these are five of 13,173 Instagram comments on the initial post of the tape cover, I can assure you there are thousands more. Now, where does this negativity come from? Could it be ignorance, homophobia(Young Thug is married to a woman by the way, and she’s flawless, in case you were wondering), or even just a place of jealousy or hate for a successful person? Whatever the reason, the hate adds to the icon here.

Plain and simple, a man who labels himself as Thug (read: masculine, will beat you up, scary) is wearing a dress and not for the first time. This is what us liberal arts college kids call progressivism (even feminism if you will, oh yeah, I went there). If you still don’t understand, it’s okay, I know you were raised in the deep south with one singular idea of what is acceptable in your narrow mind. But let me spell it out anyways, Young Thug is creating an image for himself and others that shows that a man can be a man who enjoys women, money and other “masculine” things while doing not only what he likes, but what women like as well. By wearing a dress he shed light on essentially doing whatever the fuck you want without falling into any normalcy or association with gender specifics. Referring back to the comments, particularly the ones related to homosexuality associated with the dress, the ones that read “gay” and alike show the complete lack of understanding of both the gay community and the community of people who do whatever they want, before things like Thug in a dress, the only people who stepped out of gender norms with clothing, makeup, etc. were LGBTQ+. The backward idea of gender assigned clothing is being diminished because of photos like this album cover. What Thug is doing is more than putting on a dress, it’s blurring the lines of gender association, which to many, is a very harmful and limiting idea.

Now let’s get to the positive comments by the educated individuals who love them some Young Thug, shall we? “Clothes have no gender,” “Dope album cover” “buncha’ homophobes up in here lmao, calm ur tits” and once again, my personal favorite, “Thug can bone ya WCW in a dress… got these dudes shook”. These fine people are with the times, the shits and every other positive aspect of this entire tape, cover to cover.

All this being said, do not forget that Young Thug is not pioneering anything brand new, but adding to this incredible movement of people who are open, understanding, educated and tolerant of all people. Get with it, please.