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Honolulu Lite Charles Memminger |
Teaching straight guys
taste and fashion
is hopelessTo show you how far behind the times I am, not only was I surprised that the self-improvement reality show "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy" became such a hit, but I didn't know that it was OK for straight guys to use the term "queer."
I thought it was like that other term that African Americans get to call each other but is off-limits to white guys: point guard. (Anyone offended by the preceding sentence: Please go rent the movie "White Men Can't Jump" for documentary evidence.)
"Queer Eye for the Straight Guy" is a show about how a handful of homosexual men with expertise in various things like fashion, cooking and, I believe, not behaving like an idiot in restaurants coach a heterosexual man on how to wow a girl on a date. The thesis is that homosexual men are more sensitive to what a woman wants than some galoot single hetero. The reason the show works is because scientific studies have proved that 96.4 percent of all single males over the age of 19 are pigs.
The last time I had roommates, Ira and Dave, the two guys who shared the house with me, were so swinish in their bearing, personal habits and habitat maintenance that I, a fellow pig, could barely stand it.
I practically had to convince one of the gentlemen at gunpoint that the living room was not a depository for his discarded underwear, while the other decided that toilet paper was wildly overpriced and began stacking old New York Times issues next to the porcelain convenience. And these were their good points. Needless to say, single women weren't lining up outside our house for a chance at snagging a date with its debonair inhabitants.
"QUEER EYE" became so successful that spinoffs were inevitable. There's now a "Queer Eye for the Straight Girl," in which the fashionable gay team tries to make over frumpy women.
And, strangely, there supposedly is a show in the works called "Straight Eye for the Queer Guy," where, I suppose, four or five manly men turn an otherwise stylish gay man into a slob.
I presume from this entertainment industry announcement that Ira and Dave finally have found gainful employment. I don't know if the "Queer Eye" crew could have turned Ira and Dave into anything nearly respectable, but I know that Ira and Dave could have converted Elton John into Sasquatch in a matter of weeks. After a month with Ira and Dave, Boy George would be reduced to lying in front of a TV in boxer shorts watching the World Wrestling Federation while eating a week-old mold-covered pot pie with his fingers.
Heterosexual men are pigs but they are also sensitive. They aren't going to watch "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy" more than 30 or 40 times before they figure out that it's basically making fun of them. Then they are going to want their own spinoff show. Kicking possibilities around with some fellow pigs recently, some suggestions for new TV shows included "Attractive Ladies of the Evening Freebie Eye for the Poor Ugly Guy" and "Free Pizza and Beer Delivery Girl Eye for the Monday Night Football Guys."
You can see from these suggestions that most single straight guys are simply beyond help, queer eyes or not.
See the Columnists section for some past articles.
Charles Memminger, winner of National Society of Newspaper Columnists awards, appears Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays. E-mail cmemminger@starbulletin.com