Queer Eye, Straight Guy, the Lesbians, and Me
I caved. I decided to see what the hype was about. I watched Queer Eye for the Straight Guy tonight.
Note that I say "hype", by which I mean the free promotion the media has unanimously decided to offer itself for, not what real human beings I respect actually like to watch.
I skipped an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm for this show, so admittedly, I had high expectations. By the end of the hour, I had settled on a new, more appropriate name for the show. I suggest the Bravo network rename Queer Eye to the following:
Boring Rip-Off of BBC's More Entertaining Show "Faking It" in Which a Bunch of Hardly-Amusing-Enough-for-TV Effeminate Men with a Bare Minimum of Taste (at Least When Compared to the Cultureless Slob They Get Paid to Makeover) and a Cable Production Company-Provided Budget to Buy Shit from Bed, Bath and Beyond Which the Poor Slob Could Never Have Afforded Just to Disguise Himself as Someone He's Not Purely So His Wife Can Pretend to Herself That She Didn't Completely Fuck Up Her Life by Marrying the Pathetic Bastard
You might think I'm just being cynical. Maybe you're right. Maybe I should be more upbeat and light-hearted about the unique blend of Jerry Springeresque lust for forcing other people to change their appearance to suit one's whims and the world's current fad of treating every gay guy like a circus sideshow.
And please, don't give me any "we're just laughing with the gay guys" bullshit. You know damn well you're laughing at them. Certain women are especially guilty of this extra-hearty laughter, and I have a sneaking suspicion they're laughing for the same reason they laughed so hard at Lorena Bobbit's little knee-slapper. I.e., that men acting effeminately (like some guy being separated from his penis) is a big cosmic joke on all men.
Well, maybe some of them just think a guy acting effeminately is good comedy. I don't, but hey, whatever floats your boat.
By the way, I have a strong hunch that the "flamboyant" gay guys are really just putting on some serious schtick. It's like they're all taking on the same character. I think whenever someone says "he's so gay", they really mean "he's just like the stereotype of a gay guy that I'm used to." I find it hard to believe that just because a man is sexually attracted to another man, he's necessarily going to be loud, flashy, and start waving his arms around. (And, in fact, not all gay men do. Just the ones who need you to know they're gay.)
Actually, "effeminate" isn't really the best word for how the "flamboyant" gay guys act. A better phrase might be: "comical, in-your-face compulsion to constantly prove one's rejection of one's own masculinity".
If anything, I can see that a gay guy might act truly effeminate; i.e., like a woman. This would at least make sense. But the "flamboyant" gay guys don't act like actual women.
At least the "really" gay women act sort of like men, not like caricatures of men. (Or at least they dress a little like men.) For Christ's sake, I've never seen a lesbian do an Andrew Dice Clay impersonation 24/7. If anything, lesbians act mildly masculine. They also, in general, tend to be more private then gay men. Though you might encounter an outgoing lesbian, you'll rarely, if ever, encounter one who feels the need to beat you over the head with her gayness. This is a trait almost solely existing amongst gay men.
It's as if they (again, the "flamboyant" gay men, for lack of a better word) are consumed by an internal struggle over their sexuality. I mean, I myself think about sex a hell of a lot, but I rarely feel the need to remind anyone of my heterosexuality. I sure as hell have never heard anyone say to me, "You are so straight!"
Either that, or (and, admittedly, I'm going way the hell out on a limb here) their homosexuality itself is somehow a deeply social-psychological issue. E.g., they're not sure that being gay is "right" and the flamboyant act helps to convince themselves (by convincing others) that "gayness" is part of their nature.
Again, it comes down to the question: why does a man's sexual attraction for another man lead some men, but not others, to take on the role of a bad movie stereotype?
The Need for a Fix
Somebody needs to invent a healthy way to get a fix. It just needs to be something you can do with your hands, maybe involving your mouth, that doesn't make you stupid or give you cancer. Is this so hard? The closest thing to what I'm thinking of is in a scene from Atlas Shrugged. Francisco was lying on the floor playing marbles while having a conversation. He was described as someone who felt a natural need for action, so basically the act of flicking marbles around was just something to do while he was talking. In a lot of cases, this is the purpose achieved by raising a glass of wine or beer, or inhaling a cigarette. It's something to do while you're standing or sitting around having a conversation. Eating is another thing we sometimes like to do while talking.
But why do we need to ingest and inhale things into our bodies? Isn't there something else we can do? Fidgeting isn't quite satisfying enough, and I'm not really into marbles (not that it's convenient to break them out on a barroom floor, anyway).
Gum chewing is a possibility. But you'd still have the problem of what to do with your hands. I kind of like drinking coffee, which of course is ingesting something, but it's more or less calorie-free and doesn't leave you passed out on a bus somewhere with vomit dripping down your face and a wallet full of credit card receipts for two rounds of shots, twenty-three pints of beer, and eight orders of buffalo wings.
But now that I think of it, coffee shops leave one thing to be desired: a place to stand. For some reason, people expect to stand while drinking alcohol, a depressant, but they expect to sit while drinking coffee, a stimulant. Maybe coffee shops, and the people who typically hang out in them, are so goddamn pretentious that they think standing at a bar is for the lowlife alcoholic types. Why not have a coffee bar that looks exactly like a regular bar? Like an Irish bar. I got it: why not an Irish Coffee Bar?
In a way, deaf people have one up on the rest of us. Their form of communication is physically active and seems to satisfy our natural urge to move our bodies, even while at leisure.
Maybe I can try doing jumping jacks next time someone asks me how my weekend was.
