Fashion

Someone Actually Showed Up To The Grammys In An Anti-Abortion Dress

by James Hale
Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images Entertainment/Getty Images

Politics have arrived on the red carpet at the 2018 Grammys, and their fashion sense did, too. Just like she did last year with her "Make America Great Again" dress, singer Joy Villa has chosen to parlay her beliefs into her outfit by wearing a white, anti-abortion-themed gown to the Grammys. The gown resembles a wedding dress with a fetus drawn on it, and the look is paired with a white purse emblazoned with the handwritten slogan "Choose Life." While Villa hasn't confirmed she painted her dress and purse herself, she told Fox News she was inspired to paint them for a personal reason.

Villa's 2017 dress openly celebrated the election win of then-president-elect Donald Trump; if "Make America Great Again," didn't make her allegiance obvious, Villa had also added "Trump" across the back in large silver letters. According to an Instagram post where Villa showed a snap of the heart-shaped clutch she paired with the Trump gown, she claimed her "whole artistic platform is about LOVE!" [sic].

Villa told Fox News that she "chose to make a statement" with her dress, which is a Pronovias. As for her artistic inspiration, she "gave a baby up for adoption when she was 21, and she said she supports adoption over abortion," Fox reported.

Just like last year's Villa look, this year's is garnering the attention — and ire — of Twitter users.

Users are not holding back with the burns.

Some people aren't actually sure why Villa is at the Grammys at all.

And some mostly want her to reconsider her design choices.

Villa also praised Trump and his daughter Ivanka Trump while talking to Fox, and said she's looking forward to saving money on taxes as a small business-woman. Villa's own website describes her as "a true entertainer who tours 25 countries a year and has wowed the world with her red-carpet style."

Unsurprisingly, Villa's moves on the red carpet have gotten her plenty of attention. Despite the fact that the singer is relatively unknown, Billboard reported that after she wore the MAGA dress to the 2017 Grammys, she sold about 15,000 copies of her album, I Make The Static, in two days. This was likely because conservative news outlets covered and praised the singer's dress choice, opening her to a totally new fan base.

“This is beyond my wildest dreams right now,” Villa told Billboard. “The spooky thing is that two weeks before the Grammys, I wrote down my goals and one of them was: ‘To be on the top of the Billboard charts with a song I wrote and performed.’ ... It's completely unheard of. I'm an indie, self-published performer who's mostly toured overseas and is completely self-funded, with a three-year-old album charting. I’ve always wanted to achieve this success; I just didn't expect it so sudden and so soon.”

Villa also doesn't just save her headline-making political opinions for the red carpet, either. She takes unpopular stances on varied topics — in 2017, Villa publicly spoke about the choice of Colin Kaepernick and other NFL players to kneel during the National Anthem.

"Sitting when you should be standing is more of a statement about you than about America," she said, "and you don't come off too well. You come off, frankly, as ignorant and ungrateful."

According to Villa's site, she's considering running for Congress. "I'm considering the notion of running for congress [sic] and I'm exploring the feasibility of such an endeavor by 'testing the waters,'" she says on the site. She invites people who think she should run to contribute to her. And in a move that likely won't surprise many, she's upfront about her political stances on her site as well, saying she's "pro-life, pro-religious freedom, pro-Trump, pro-military, pro-increased border security, pro-legal, merit based [sic] immigration, pro-education in inner cities, pro-gun ownership rights, pro-small business tax breaks, pro-free speech, pro-populist, nationalist, America first."