2004-03-12 - 11:38 a.m.
Sorry about the long dry patch; really damn busy at work.
Confession time here.
I knew getting cable would be dangerous for us, but I hadn’t anticipated the effects of a steady diet of home-improvement and style shows. Our house needs a lot of decorative and design work, and up until now we didn’t have the vocabulary to start talking about what we wanted to do. After several weeks of Home & Garden Network, BBC International, and “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy”, we can finally get concrete ideas.
I gotta come clean here: I’m getting hooked on “Queer Eye”. Yeah, there are some problems with it. The show pushes high-end products as the secret to happiness. It reinforces stereotypes about both gay and straight men: gay men naturally know more about fashion and style, straight men are mostly bumbling geeks who don’t know how to take care of themselves, that sort of thing. The guys can get kinda rude about the things they find in their victims’ apartments (commenting on how boring someone’s porn is, snide jokes about “boy sauce”, etc.) In its defense, though, there are some benefits. They show that gay men are not all mincing little nancy-pants (Carson does swan about a bit too much at times, but I think he’s playing to the camera). Thom, the design expert, goes out of his way to use things people already have rather than throwing everything out. Jai, the culture vulture, does a lot to push manners and personal presentation. Ted makes food and wine much less intimidating for the novice, and Carson, for all his swanning and cattiness, does come up with things that genuinely look good. Kyan, the personal grooming maven, is the worst for pushing high-end product, but I’ve managed to glean a few tips on shaving and skin care from him. The subjects, at the end, look very natural and comfortable in their new clothes and apartments. I’ve found websites that do follow-up interviews with people on the show, and by and large they’ve been very happy with the experience. (It helps that the network pays for all the expensive eye cream and furniture and clothes.) It’s not like the problems HGTV has had, with contractors doing shoddy work on their makeover shows. Ultimately, they’re five guys who are very good at what they do, very passionate about sharing their knowledge and skills, and watching that in action is always fun.
Watching “Queer Eye” has started busting me out of my personal ruts. I have an unfortunate tendency towards clutter and haphazardness. I’ll wear shirts until they’re raggedy, jeans until they fall apart, and avoid wearing chinos because it’s too much of a bother to keep them ironed. I get dressed in the dark, more often than not. I hate folding clothes, and I tend to rip though drawers looking for something. After a couple episodes of “Queer Eye”, I’ve started looking at my stuff, weeding out the old things I don’t use any more, and reorganizing what’s left. For example, I have a lot of printed tee-shirts. Instead of stacking them flat, I roll them so the printing is displayed and arrange them like file folders. This way I can pick something out without tearing through the whole drawer. End result: less clutter, fewer piles of laundry about, and my oh-so-neat wife is happy. I’m also thinking more about how my clothes go together, and how to take care of the good things I have. I can wear whatever I like to work, but that doesn’t mean I should wear the same sweatshirt every day for a week. I’m not about to get a completely new wardrobe or buy $30 shampoo, but I finally know how to think about clothes and organization and so forth, whereas before I was completely lost.
There was a lot of talk about “the death of manners” for a while. Thirty years of grungy rock stars made good grooming and formal clothes unfashionable. The general trend towards casualness that started in the ‘70s, along with some strident complaints about the sexist and classist nature of good manners, did a lot to confuse people about how to act. Fashion magazines push really expensive stuff and make fashion inaccessible, so most people just throw their arms up and walk away from the whole business. It’s good to see a show that deals with this sort of thing in a fun way. My big motivating question: if these guys showed up at my house, what would they do to it, and to me?
