Queer Eye for the Straight Guy
 

Do you like QE? I can weekly see it on Sunday night. I watch QE on Hong Kong TVB-Pearl Channel (www.tvb.com.hk). I think the QE cannot change my life in a short time. But it has brought me many good ideas.

1. Gays are never abnormal. Ago, in our conventional thoughts, gays are abnormal and antihuman nature. It is just becasue we know little and listen to the gays. From QE, I know they are good people. The only difference is that they just like same sexual friends.
2. The important thing in life is the quality. The QE teach us how to eat well, dress sexy, feel comfortable. Almost of us want to have the quality life, but they don't how to start and how to do. QE just do this work for us.
3. How to love? Sex and the City teaches me how to make love and have the right sex. But the QE teach me how to think love, find love and keep love go on.
4. Beauty is more self-confidence, comfortable, sexy. In every episode Fab Five find out different ways to make the guy more self-confidence and lead him to find himself.
5. Applied life skills. I have learned many good skills from them, such as take one pocket book to read in waiting bus.

All in all, I really like their good shows. Hope they have a good life as they do in the show.

Billy...I'm not sure that American TV is really the best model for your lifestyle, sex life, or pretty much anything else that is remotely grounded in reality.

I know that, but I don't do all things that they say in shows. I like Friends, I know I cannot have the life like them forever. The programs make me know more and know more.

I agree with Elspode. Although your 5-point Am-TV Guide To Life is quite sweet, I'm interested to know exactly what you get from these programs? How much do you take on board as valuable advice, and can you see through the Hollywood characateurs (sp?), drama and tat?

If it teaches people to be more accepting (of homosexuality etc) then brilliant. But if all it instills is a $ and fashion-framed perspective of love and life from Sex and the City's superficial characters and plots, it is slightly concerning.

Billy,

I really like your post!

I think these shows teach the same things to Westerners as they do to you.

We have big debates over gays. Many people will never accept them. We argue about whether gays have made a choice to have sex with each other. Many scientists now believe it is a part of the brain that makes one gay, and that it is not a choice. I agree with this because I have seen my gay friends grow up and their sexuality is deeply a part of them. It does not seem like a choice. My gay friends say they did not think about it, they didn't choose, they just knew.

The younger people accept it more often, because shows like QE show gays to be normal in most other ways. Younger people are more likely to watch QE.

While TV from any country shouldn't necessarily be taken as the be-all-end-all of the mannerisms of the people of that country, one can glean some useful information from shows that are intended to give useful information. QE is more or less a self-help program. Take X guy and make his life better somehow...new hair, new clothes, whatever. The gay hosts part of it is just a selling point. There wouldn't be nearly as much hoopla about the show if it was five straight guys, and chances are they'd be pegged as gay anyway if they were doing this kind of show. If anything, this show bolsters the stereotype that gay men have much better fashion and personal aesthetic sense than straight guys do. :D

I'm curious, Billy: When you see QE in China, is it subtitled (with the Chinese written at the bottom of the screen) or is it dubbed (you hear someone speaking Chinese instead of English?)

My only real problem with QE is that they often ruin perfectly good straight guys ... like the dude that was the male model that looked a little bit like Richard Chamberlain, had really long hair and a beard? Hot guy with the hair, average guy with the hair and beard gone. He had a really happening house too, with an excellent room of manly comfort and solitude that they screwed up.

Some of their straight guys are in dire need of some help, including a good backwaxing, but overall, the Fab 5 go way to far.

I don't think that QE is a good place to learn about American Culture and social mores. I'm not sure if there ARE any good ones, but QE ain't it.

I know the episode you're talking about wolf, and I totally agree. He looked 15 years older without the beard. I didn't need the long hair, necessarily, but making the Brawny man look like David Bowie was very unsexy.

I like long hair.

A lot.

Totally makes me all drooly.

Unfortunately, I'm afraid that even the current "tolerance" for homosexuality on TV is nothing more than a, "Hey! Will and Grace is doing great! We've got to have some gay content, and quick, or we won't be trendy!" sort of thing.

There is no social consciousness involved, here. It *is* all about the $.

Did anyone else notice that Ellen's sitcom stopped being funny when she made it a vehicle for politicized expression of her gayness?

i agree w/ El on that. Our society as a whole is become MUCH more tolerant and open minded towards the gay populace, but TV and the media in general aren't trying to spread gay tolerance, they're just trying to get a quick buck off the "gay trend".

Well for my money it wasn't that funny even before. She's a poster child for how funny stand-up comedians almost never make funny TV stars.

I just gotta say, I know the episode with the David Bowie looking guy, and man... I thought he cleaned up nice!
Billy! its very interesting to hear about your reaction to these programs. I'll admit that Sex and the City has prompted me, not too subconsciously, to purchase new shoes that look great but hurt my feet. I know its not practical, but it is fun.