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Queer Eye is a Minstrel Show
by Guy Babineau

Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, a smash hit on U.S. cable 
television's Bravo!, premiered in Canada last week 
(Saturdays, 8:45 p.m.). The gimmick? If you don't know 
by now, you're as clueless as the style-blind heterosexual 
schlubs who are swarmed each week by a S.W.A.T. team 
of five giddy gay men and given a grooming, wardrobe, 
and living-space makeover. In Mart Crowley's 1968 
Broadway play The Boys in the Band, a melodramatic 
period piece about a dinner party of homosexuals who 
take turns spewing chunks of chewed-up scenery as each 
one tells his tortured tale of self-loathing, a character 
remarks, “Mary, it takes a fairy to make something 
pretty.” Apparently, Mary, it still does.

Fairies, of course, live in the land of make-believe, which 
means that the realm of reality TV is a perfect home for 
them. In real life, American gays are still second-class 
citizens, viewed as immoral by a large segment of the 
population. But on TV, they're role models for social 
acceptability: they cook, clean, sew, keep the place 
looking nice, and love to entertain. They are well-
mannered, practised in the art of conversation, dress 
beautifully, and take good care of themselves. According 
to the mainstream media, the modern gay man is a 21st-
century geisha. 

The hets on Queer Eye are typecast too, and equally as 
vapid, so it's really a transition from one stereotype to 
another. These days in North America, there is no way of 
telling how a guy swings, and the clues certainly won't be 
found in his closet. Some of the biggest slobs I know are 
gay men who work in fashion and the arts, and I have 
dated more than one hoser homo. This show is about 
voyeurism, not style or, for that matter, sexuality. Its 
sow's-ear-to-silk-purse schtick is yet another attempt to 
cash in on the motivational "makeover madness" craze in 
which a person's life is instantaneously and irrevocably 
altered (for the better) by a haircut, a visit to the spa, and 
some prêt-à-porter designer duds. 

In the first episode, the so-called Fab Five transformed a 
longhaired carpenter and aspiring artist named, no 
kidding, Butch, who looked like a mountain hermit, into a 
hot and happening gallery whore. While Carson Kressley, 
the quintet's sly über-fem and fashion adviser--
shamelessly and hilariously stealing focus in an obvious 
bid to be the group's first breakout Spice Fag--took Butch 
on a shopping spree and to get a fake, out-of-season tan (a 
big no-no unless you want to look like George Hamilton), 
the rest of the group, clucking like hens, turned his 
cluttered walkup in New York's Hell's Kitchen into a well-
organized if uneventful bachelor pad. 

The IKEA-catalogue result seemed like a waste of Thom 
Filicia's talents. The team’s interior designer owns a New 
York company that House Beautiful named as one of the 
top 100 design firms in the U.S. Presumably he spends 
time with his real clients getting to know their likes and 
dislikes. The TV vogue for surprising someone with a 
remodelled living space is not what normally happens in 
the profession. Ted Allen, a contributing editor of Esquire 
and a former senior editor at Chicago magazine, was 
reduced to showing Butch how to make pizza snacks. 
Kyan Douglas, a cosmetologist certified by the Aveda 
Institute in New York and formerly a hair colourist for 
television, magazines, and one of Manhattan's hottest 
salons, suggested highlights plus a moisturizing regimen, 
but mostly just stood around. Jai Rodriguez, the group's 
Miss Manners and a seasoned performer who starred in 
Rent on Broadway, gave Butch some etiquette advice 
about how to work the room at his art opening, as though 
it were Bath circa Jane Austen instead of a laid-back 
alternative venue in contemporary Manhattan. 

Although hej's been a well-regarded stylist for Polo Ralph 
Lauren, Saks, Bloomingdale’s, and other high-rollers in 
the rag trade, Kressley possesses a dress sense that is 
fleetingly trendy and influenced by the Cher school of 
self-expression; however, he managed to resist foisting too 
much of his own fly-by-night faddishness onto his victim. 
Butch looked pretty good, but he should not heed 
Kressley’s advice to wear shoes without socks to an 
evening occasion. And yes, mixing checks and stripes may 
be in, but that's hardly a revelation or a constant. What 
about a week from next Tuesday? 

To be fair, in each episode, the outcome can ostensibly be 
maintained by the tastefully born-again heterosexual once 
our boys have minced out the door--if, that is, he has 
enough money to continue to afford the goods and 
services promoted by Queer Eye's unabashed product 
placement. But there's nothing here you can't get from 
myriad men’s magazines and home-and-garden shows. 
What happens when the theatrics begin to tire? The 
producers may want to consider respecting the group's 
combined abilities and expertise by bumping up the 
professional advice and toning down the minstrel show. 

Recently, I was invited onto Mojo Radio (“Talk Radio for 
Guys”) to dazzle its sports-obsessed demographic with 
fashion wisdom. I found it ironic, considering how many 
star baseball, hockey, and soccer players, and other 
athletes preen like crazy and dress in Armani, Boss, and 
Gucci, et cetera. And the other week, a male reader wrote 
me asking for advice on a range of style matters. If the Fab 
Five can do it, so can I. I'm going to dangle a few pearls in 
my next column. Man to man, not gay to straight, because 
a real man's first rule of personal style is to be perceived 
for who he is, not whom he sleeps with. 

As a character in The Boys in the Band observed: "What's 
good for the gander is good for the gander."

Originally published in The Georgia Straight

© Guy Babineau 2003-2004

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