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Granny Eye For The Queer Eyes For The Straight Guy
Are those jokers for real?
 When the channel 8TV starts airing Queer Eye For The Straight Guy in Malaysia, I'm pleasantly surprised. This bodes well for a more open-minded Malaysia, don't you think? It also gives me a chance to really sit down and watch for myself this show that has people either loving it or hating it. After one season, I think I can safely ask this question: are those five jokers for real?
For those unaware of what this show is about - this means those people in countries where it is legal for the government to ban anything gay-related while allowing violent movies to be shown on TV or on the big screen - QEFTSG is about five gay guys coming into a straight guy's apartment or house in every episode to give that guy a makeover. The "gay" and "straight" thing is very important to remember because this show shoves the "gay" and "straight" thing down the viewer's throat, as if it rightfully suspects that this show is another dull makeover show if the five guys hosting it don't remind people that they are Gay Gay GAYGAYGAYGAY every second on the show. "Ho, ho, here, let's get some clothes, Straight Dude, and did I tell you that I am GAY? Wow, what a dirty toilet, let my GAY ass self tell you STRAIGHT losers what kind of toilet seat you should look for. Oh, and I'm GAY. GAY, mom, GAY!"
The five Gay Guys are, let's see. Kyan's the one who does the beauty tips and strips off at least his shirt on every possible moment on the show. Straight guys see him and are shocked to realize that not all gay guys are screaming, mincing drama queens dressed in pink feather boas. There's Jai. He used to play Angel on Rent, every faghag's favorite musical, which I guess makes him an expert on telling Straight Dudes how to have sex with their girlfriends, wives, or next-door neighbors who happen to look like a porn star. Other than that, I don't know what he does on this show. "Culture", schmulture. Carson handles fashion, and "fashion" on Gay TV is a politically correct euphemism for "screaming nelly", which is what he is. But he's arguably the most useful handbag to bring along when one goes shopping for clothes. Thom is in charge of "interior". He must be lowest on the totem pole of the Fab Five because he is forced to stay in the smelly house of the Straight Guy and pull down the walls, repaint them, and redecorate the house while the others take the Straight Guy out to shop, get a bikini wax, or taste fine wine. My inner faghag's boyfriend Ted is in charge of food and I heart him because I would love to have him in my kitchen cooking for me 24/7. He teaches the Straight Guy to cook when everyone knows that it is a near hopeless task most of the time.
I strongly suspect that this show could do without the most useless of the five, namely Jai and Kyan, but these two have to stay because they attract the largest audience of this show: namely, straight females. As I've said, I don't know what Jai does on this show. He highlights as a vocalist on dance hits all over UK clubs when he's not asking people to cover him with a thousand sweet kisses, but his CDs that he introduces to Straight Guys are straightforward clichés of metrosexuality - bland, java lounge lizard music filled with somnambulic guitars and strings with a lifeless detached female vocalist singing over it or some faux-eno rock group. Surely that isn't the kind of music he actually listens to in his free time, since he isn't even trying to have a music career in that direction? But I guess Straight Guys won't like it if Jai pushes a copy of Kylie Minogue's Body Language at their face. As for Kyan, all he does are either getting his shirt off or offering three minutes of sales pitch for whatever beauty products he has with him that particular episode. He's just a talking Avon catalogue and he's not even that good-looking. Ted's the sexiest one if you ask me.
One thing that perplexes me though is that the Straight Guys they work on every episode actually don't pose much of a challenge. These guys are actually good-looking men. Did you see their houses? Most of these Straight Guys live in big mansions or posh apartments filled with useless but expensive knick-knacks. I've never seen any of the Straight Guys with a TV that isn't twice the size of mine at home. As my husband remarked, these Straight Guys aren't in need of a makeover or social rehabilitation as much as they are just Rich Guys Who Don't Know How To Spend Their Money. I really roll up my eyes when they start trying to make a gorgeous guy with a hard-muscled body look good, because that is like stealing candies from a baby - a complete no-brainer. When are the Fab Five going to start making over people living in the projects? Or at least work on a five-hundred pound obese, unemployed man living off his parents in suburbia hell? QEFTSG doesn't dare to take risks. The result is a show that is so repetitious, week by week, that I wonder why people enjoy watching this show so much. The "before" and "after" scenarios are never so drastic that I am wowed by the changes. At least on Trading Spaces there is an element of surprise when one gets to view the different ways people decorate a house, but QEFTSG has the Fab Five offering the same advice to the same kind of Straight Guy week after week. Why are you guys watching this show?
In my opinion, this show isn't guilty of perpetuating stereotypes that send back the GLBT affirmative action back to pre-Stonewall days or bringing the fall of the Good Moral Christian Civilization that some people insist that USA is. To accuse this show of any of that is to give this show more importance than it deserves. It's just a show that has the temerity to be boring. Not bad, not lousy, just very dull.
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