They’re gathering in lunch-break rooms. They’re meeting at bars. They’re congregating in their living rooms.
They are women. And they’re getting together to watch “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy,” the Bravo network’s breakthrough reality makeover show that, while reinventing the relationship between straight and gay men, also is drawing big numbers of women, some of whom yearn for a little makeover action for themselves.
“I need these guys to come do a makeover for me . . . why do they only make over other guys? I think they need to expand to help out the ladies,” writes Jennifer Saylor on the humor e-zine Newmoanyeah.com.
The show, which airs Tuesdays at 9 p.m., reinvents one straight man per episode as five stylish gay men–experts in fashion, decor and lifestyle matters–take a hapless, slobby straight guy under their collective wings and, through their expertise and unflagging moral support, transform him into a snappier version of himself.
And women are lapping it up. Women in the advertiser-coveted 25- to 54-year-old demographic made up 56 percent of “Queer Eye’s” viewers last week: 1.027 million female and 813,000 male viewers, according to Bravo’s Nielsen report.
Julie Charet, 30, of Gurnee counts herself among the women who wish they could be a “Queer Eye” makeover subject.
“The guys really bring a flair to the show. I like how they combine good tips with a great sense of humor,” said Charet, who is 14 weeks pregnant and plans to give her child the middle name Kyan, after one of the Fab Five, hairstylist Kyan Douglas.
Jaime Hargrove, 26, a non-profit events coordinator, watches the show every week with some girlfriends and gay friends. On Wednesday afternoons, 27-year-old account executive Kea Meyers of Lakeview gathers with “mostly female” co-workers to watch a taping of the show during their lunch break. And at Big Chicks, a gay bar in Uptown, a sizeable female crowd gathers on Tuesday nights to watch “Queer Eye,” according to bartender Stuart Gegge.
“What I like is how the show doesn’t get dirty or mean, and it ends on a positive note. But we’re all a little catty,” Hargrove said, noting that her viewing group doesn’t hold back when it comes to blasting the bumbling straight guy.
Men and shopping
What’s likely drawing female viewers to the show, said Laura Vazquez, an assistant professor of media production and theory at Northern Illinois University, is the presence of what many women hold dear: straight men, shopping and gay friends.
“It aligns sensibilities,” she said. “There’s the non-threatening [gay] male figure and then there’s the `metrosexual’ synthesis: Heterosexual males are being feminized, as they are taught the spectacle of the body, and how to appreciate consumerism.”
Although “Queer Eye” doesn’t explore–or exploit–the friendships between straight women and gay men, such friendships used as a plot device have become more common on television in the last decade, Vazquez said, on shows such as the 1994 drama series “My So-Called Life,” HBO’s “Sex and the City” and NBC’s “Will and Grace” and in the standup routines of comics such as Margaret Cho.
And films as old as “Adam’s Rib,” the 1949 Spencer Tracy-Katharine Hepburn comedy directed by George Cukor, who was gay, and Alfred Hitchcock’s 1948 thriller “Rope,” subtly tackled the ties between gay men and straight women by implying that certain characters were gay, said Ron Gregg, a University of Chicago gender studies lecturer and cinema and media studies programming director.
“Supporting gay characters such as decorators and neighbors exhibited incredible talent, taste and wit that drew in the female characters,” Gregg said. “And, in real life, many of the gay men that women did interact with have been their hairdressers, their interior designers and so on, so there was a correlation between gay men with beauty and culture.”
Meanwhile, some female fans of “Queer Eye” have gay friends who share some of the characteristics that viewers like about the Fab Five: straightforwardness and empathy.
Pure, open relationship
Recruiter Scott Stearns, 39, a fan of the show who is gay, thinks gay men “identify better with straight women than we do straight men. I don’t consider myself a feminine man, but I don’t have very many straight male friends; we just don’t have much in common. Like many women, I like shopping, I don’t like football, and I’m more in tune with my emotions. Also, there’s no sexual tension, so it’s a pure, open relationship.”
Meghan Stromberg, a 26-year-old trade magazine reporter from Logan Square, has gay friends ranging from high school chums to neighbors she fondly refers to as her “gaybors.”
“I would love my friends even if they weren’t gay,” she said. “I know it sounds stereotypical, but they’re sassy beyond belief and very open. They say what’s on their minds, they’re educated, and have an outrageous sense of humor.”
Asked why she thinks bonds between gay men and straight women can be so strong, Stromberg said: “Most of these guys have had to deal with a lot of garbage. That means they end up being very open-minded, great listeners and good advice-givers.”
The U. of C.’s Gregg puts it this way: “Since the 1960s or so, there has been an alliance between gay men and straight women, along with lesbians, because they have been together in fighting straight white men for power.”
Although many straight women might get a no-strings-attached male friendship from gay men, what do gay men get out of their friendships with straight females?
“Originally, gay men and straight women bonded as women acted as `beards’ for the men,” said Gregg, explaining the phenomenon of women acting as wives or girlfriends for gay men who believed their homosexuality wouldn’t be understood or accepted. “Both people can go out in public, have some fun, cut loose, without a sexual threat.”
Said Stearns: “Straight women and gay men have been cool for years,” but with a show like “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy,” which draws in both genders, of all sexual orientations, “straight men are finally catching on.”
