IF there were rap sheets detailing crimes of straight-maleness, mine would have more than a few misdemeanors. I have been to Hooters more times than I've eaten sushi. I refer to both men and women as "dude." And in my bathroom, right above the toilet, I proudly hang a print of dogs playing poker.
So when I heard about the new Bravo series "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy," in which five fashionable gay men remake, redecorate and reoutfit the lives and apartments of hapless heteros, I immediately wanted to sign up. Sure, I'd rather spend my free time on a barstool than in Bed, Bath & Beyond. But it seemed like such a good deal: by simply submitting to the whims of five seriously credentialed gay men, I would have the chance to make up for years of laggardly personal grooming and home decorating in a single, effort-free bound. And there didn't seem to be much risk involved. It was like that old Vidal Sassoon ad: If I don't look good, they don't look good.
Like a league of superheroes, the members of the team are each gifted with a special power. Thom Filicia is a master of interior design who dispenses his lessons with sharp rhetorical jabs; Kyan Douglas teaches you about grooming with the gentle wisdom of Yoda; Jai Rodriguez broadens your cultural horizons and thereby your social opportunities; Ted Allen serves up expertise about fine food and wine. And then there's Carson Kressley, the fashion maven whose indignant flapping and squawking provides some of the show's more hilarious moments. Bravo refers to these gentlemen as the Fab Five, though they might better be described as the Five Horsemen of the Straight Male Apocalypse: in each hour-long episode, they fix their gaze on one hapless Neanderthal, counseling him and taunting him on everything from his underwear to his icebox. The debut episode (Tuesday at 9 p.m.) features a hurly-burly Broadway set builder named Brian but known as - if you can believe it - Butch. At the outset of the show, he has Lynyrd Skynyrd hair, smudgy overalls and a Unabomber apartment. But Butch is an aspiring artist, and in anticipation of his first gallery show, he is hoping for a new look....
I wasn't sure I could survive the full treatment, which usually takes four days, so for the sake of this article, I arranged to undergo a one-day demonstration. When the five experts arrive at my Brooklyn apartment, they blow in the front door all at once, filling my one-bedroom apartment with a tsunami of gay energy and a chorus of loudly disapproving chatter. Ted later tells me this frontal assault is deliberate - "a shock and awe kind of thing," he says, by which he seems to mean lots of people touching my abs, and casting aspersions on my every possession....
After 11 hours, our one-day experiment comes to an end, and it is time for the Fab Five to depart from my life. As they go, some important questions follow in their aloe-scented wake. Would I ever again find jeans as comfortable as the Levi's Carson bought me? Would I ever get around to replacing my "hospice chic" bedding? Is there such a thing as too much Ritter?
Viewers of the show may be left with slightly weightier questions. Watching Adam, for example, the second episode's subject, pump moussed pate onto crackers with Tetris-level concentration, is an unexpectedly touching experience: Look how hard he's trying! Look how much he cares! The scene, and the show as a whole, suggests that something has changed not just in Bravo's programming department (which is bringing out an increasingly gay-friendly lineup) but in the culture at large. Television has long featured straight male characters making jokes about gay men, or teasing each other about acting gay, or just generally reveling in their babe-watching, couch-potato-ing heterosexuality. Not infrequently, these characters have even been played by gay men.
Now the same medium features guys like Butch and Adam laboring intensely to look more gay. And all across America, straight guys will watch the show, and from their stained, sagging couches, where they sit in their boxers drinking Budweiser from a can, they'll see people's lives transformed by queerness, and they'll think, "Dude, maybe someday that could be me."
[The full text of the article: <http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/13/arts/television/13SELL.html>.] *****
Mark Simpson, "Meet the Metrosexual," <http://www.salon.com/ent/feature/2002/07/22/metrosexual/>.
David Beckham on the cover of _Attitude_; <http://victoria.330.ca/attitude7.jpg> -- Yoshie
* Calendars of Events in Columbus: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/calendar.html>, <http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php>, & <http://www.cpanews.org/> * Student International Forum: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osudivest.org/> * Al-Awda-Ohio: <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio> * Solidarity: <http://solidarity.igc.org/>
