Straight guy finds truth in 'Queer Eye'
The Associated Press
The Fab Five of Bravo's hit television show "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy."
By Alfred Lubrano
KNIGHT RIDDER NEWSPAPERS
In my old blue-collar neighborhood, wearing vests was gay.
Wearing sunscreen was gay.
Crying was gay.
Knowing how to tie a tie was gay.
Not beating up outsiders was gay.
As a result, lots of straight men like me grew up confused and fearful about homosexuality, which was equated with weakness - which meant you were unmanly.
And if you weren't manly in working-class Brooklyn, you were nothing.
But now - oh, how life changes, Mr. Man - there's this great and growing landmark acknowledgment of gay existence. We have gay marriage and lesbian chic and, most amazing for me, the makeover TV program "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy."
What an incredible show. Here is nothing less than unprecedented straight-gay detente, served up in a jokey, often outrageous format.
The five gay men who roar in like a chartreuse hurricane to improve some helpless hetero's life are fully aware of the ingrained squeamishness that most straight guys have about gay men.
The so-called Fab Five, in fact, play to that. They push and challenge until the straight man's fears and reservations are exposed as the irrational beliefs they really are.
"Let me tuck in your shirt!" one of the Five intones. Another time, a straight man is ordered to rub his cheek against one of the Five's: "Let me feel your stubble. It's important."
Often, the Five are touching and hugging their straight charges, who allow themselves to be handled, however reluctantly. It seems like more than a play for comic discomfort. In the midst of all the makeover giddiness, little bridges are being built between Gay Land and the Kingdom of the Straights.
When the Five first eye the straight guy's lair to begin the makeover process, they often start with the bathtub. Straight men's bathtubs are scummy - that seems to be a given.
Beyond that, the show shows us, straight men don't have a single decent shirt. Worse, they eat only burritos and Chunky Soup and never moisturize. They don't know nothin' about nothin'.
Few of us ever did. Back in Brooklyn, guys in my neighborhood thought all they needed to succeed socially was a decent car: white Cadillacs with red leather interiors, plastic red peppers hanging from the rearview mirrors, and car horns that played the first 12 notes to the theme from "The Godfather."
These "real" men impressed women by jumping out of the cars, grabbing themselves and yelling: "Ay, oh, honey, how 'bout it?" Astonishing as it sounds, this charming technique sometimes worked.
I'm thankful I did not emerge from all this a bigoted, Neanderthal homophobe. Neither was I particularly enlightened, however.
When I was in my early 20s, writing a story about gay life for a paper in Columbus, Ohio, I pulled aside the gay man who was going to help me sample the scene at a leather biker bar and asked him sheepishly, "Could you, you know, watch out for me tonight?"
Oh, the guy went crazy.
"What makes you think you're so hot that a man would want you?" he yelled at me. "And why would a gay man waste his time with a straight man anyway?"
Good point. But that's the crux of the hetero man's fear, isn't it?
"One of the things that's so awkward for straight men is they feel uncomfortable at the thought that a gay man would be interested in them," said Glenn Good, a psychologist and expert in notions of masculinity from the University of Missouri.
"If a gay man finds you attractive, you should just think of it as a compliment. You're under no obligation to do anything with that. After all, women have to deal with men pursuing them all the time."
In other words, my hetero brothers, gay men ain't all out to rock (and redecorate) our worlds. You can unclench and move on.
Now, a few gay critics have complained that the show dwells too much on homosexual stereotypes of neatness, cooking acumen and knowledge of couture.
But "Queer Eye" actually alters sexual politics, says University of Washington psychologist Doug Haldeman (who is gay). "The show puts gay men in positions of power, helping straight men," he said. "And gay men are allowed into bedrooms and bathrooms - the inner sanctums of straight men, where the gay men are very much in control."
And, really, what the Fab Five are saying is what women have been trying to drum into hetero heads for years: Knowing this stuff makes a person more desirable to be around.
(Incidentally, my wife plausibly observed that the straight guys on "Queer Eye" may have ignored self-improvement advice from their moms, girlfriends and wives precisely because the advisers are women. "But," she said, "when a man tells them to clean up, regardless of his sexual orientation, then the guy listens." It's the male-as-ultimate-authority argument.)
Basically, what "Queer Eye" is about is gay men making straight men more pleasing to women. Haven't women wished for years that their fellas be a little more like their gay friends? "This night should be about her - what she wants and needs," a Fab Fiver instructs a compliant protégé before a date. "Be nice. And listen."
This is not a bad message for us straight guys to take away. But just as important, "Queer Eye" lets narrow heteros confront their gay discomfort and demonstrates how two disparate camps could get along, given the chance. It teaches fraternal acceptance, along with the occasional shaving tip.
"Queer Eye" also shows the world how there is more than one way to be a man. That's stuff they could learn back in Brooklyn - and everywhere else. |
