Let’s spend a moment on “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy.”
A friend of mine had started to get “into” the show in that way people seem to get “into” all of this reality garbage. In a time when I am only nominally employed and still can’t seem to find the time to call my loved ones, it offends me on some level that people are setting their VCRs for “Trading Spaces.” But my friend is into “Queer Eye,” referring to the actual humans featured on it as “characters,” breathlessly anticipating the next episode (prediction: they’re going to do a makeover, indistinguishable from the previous week’s makeover, while hundreds of talented screenwriters die penniless in the streets with good ideas for fictional dramas in their starved brains). That sort of thing. In this mindset, my friend asked what I thought of the show. Having seen a whopping two episodes, and therefore being an authoritative expert on the basis that every episode is the same, I replied, “I think it’s about time a group of well-financed men devoted themselves to helping straight men become more superficial and shallow. I’ve always said, ‘People need to be more superficial and shallow.’”
Don’t get me wrong; I don’t think it’s making democracy crumble or anything. I thought it was entertaining and good-natured when I watched those two episodes in a row, the two episodes that constitute my entire “knowledge” of the show. It was (on the surface) more about building up than tearing down. When I think about it seriously, though, I do get a little depressed.
Is it just me, or does our society react to inequity by trying to bring the high down rather than the low up?
There’s this Christina Aguilera song on MTV 3 or 4 (digital cable rocks) all the time. It’s called something inspiring like “Nobody Can Hold Us Down.” Once you get past the title and listen to the actual song, you hear that it once again complains about that rightly upsetting double standard that says a promiscuous man is a stud but a promiscuous woman is a whore. No new ground is broken here. Then, though- and this is where it becomes relevant to us- the song and its singer seem to state the position that this double standard would be resolved if female promiscuity were just acceptable, too. This is, in fact, the opposite of the way to solve the problem. The problem is not that Christina is being called a whore unjustly (or even inaccurately); the problem is that there’s no male word for “slut.” It’s not that the girls’ behavior should be acceptable and
I should leave Christina’s hotpants alone; it’s that the guys’ behavior is also unacceptable and should not be celebrated either. More acceptable promiscuity is not the way to make the world a better place.
A similar principle is at the root of my relatively minor problem with the Queer Eyes. Yes, yes, straight guys are slobs who don’t care about color coordination or ironing and don’t know how to dance. All of them, everywhere. Whatever. All women and gay men, every last one, have an eye for personal appearance and the finer things. Fine. Women are only demanding that men show the same effort for them that they’ve had to show men for centuries. I suppose that’s OHHH hold on a second; isn’t all that effort something we’ve been complaining about for the last 50 years?
Correct me if I missed something, but have I not been hearing for my entire life that women are held to a ridiculous standard of perfection, fitness and weight by the fashion industry? That they are forced to starve themselves and cover themselves in absurd beauty products to meet an unattainable standard of beauty and sexuality? That male-dominated society judges women on their appearance rather than their skills, intelligence or accomplishments? That magazines and videos have presented us with an airbrushed fantasy that is leading us all to nothing but bulimia and plastic surgery? Was I not forced to memorize The Beauty Myth? Haven’t I listened to cultural thinkers ever since I could read telling me that we are slaves to consumerism and status? Most importantly: after an entire lifetime of hearing this, am I supposed to be entertained by the idea that the solution is to give guys body dysmorphia too?
Be yourself!
People will love you for who you really are!
Don’t give in and follow whatever other people say is cool, trendy or fashionable!
So, was that all officially bullshit now?
Because I thought it was kinda nice.
When I see Queer Eye, its message as I interpret it is that straight guys’ real problem is that they’re not insecure enough. Their problem is that they’re comfortable with themselves, and that pisses off people who spend two hours getting ready to leave the house. It’s like makeover-as-cultural-vengeance.
As I see it, in other words, the problem isn’t that straight guys don’t care enough about their appearance. It’s that everyone else cares way, way too much, and as a result the world we live in is ugly on the inside.
You know what show I want to see? I want to see a show where a woman is dating a disorganized slob, and a task force of five comes in and shows her that there are things more important than clothes, not everybody likes to dance, and wine really isn’t especially important. Then they could do a makeover where they make her take off all that goddamned lipstick and put her in a polo shirt and some jeans. If he’s still not good enough for her, they can buy her a one-way ticket to Los Angeles and some Botox. They could call it “Love Me or Leave Me,” or “There’s a Human with a Soul Inside This T-Shirt, You Merciless Harpies.”
It’s okay to like a guy who cooks food, perhaps in his spotlessly clean bachelor bathroom. I think those are things that can be reasonably expected of everyone. But if you’re dating somebody and thinking, “He/she’s great, but the way that apartment is decorated may come between us,” the decorating is not your actual problem. The fact that you’re an ass is your problem.
There’s a conundrum at the heart of it all: if a guy really likes you, he should want to look nice for you some/all of the time without you even having to ask, but if you really like him, you shouldn’t ever care what he’s fucking wearing. And the same holds true on his end.
In defense of the show, half the episodes I’ve seen (which is to say one of them) was a guy who wanted to sing a song he wrote about his wife to her on stage at a club, and he wanted it to be special and magical for her because he loved her so much. He was the one who said, “For a special occasion, I want to knock my wife’s socks off,” and I thought that was really sweet. Unfortunately, the other episode featured a girlfriend who, frankly, had fangs and leathery wings and represented everything about the show’s message that troubles me.
Be yourself.
People will love you for who you really are.
Don’t give in and follow whatever other people say is cool, trendy or fashionable.
Either we believe it or we don’t, my friends! Slobs of the World, Unite!