I’ve started watching Queer Eye, the Netflix revival of the hit show from the 2000s where five gay men – hereonin referred to as the Fab Five – descend upon the home of a worldweary Joe or Joanna Soap who has been nominated by a friend. Over the course of a week they teach that person how to groom and dress themselves, cook good food, understand the root cause of their issues and cure it with a cultural outing (just go with it, trust me) and make their house pretty. One of my friends says it’s a ‘balm for troubled souls’. Another friend says it could only work in America. They’re both right, but why are we three so drawn to a show that could really only be made for Americans by Americans with Americans, and what’s the story with the Irish that such relentless optimism and unbridled positivity is all a bit, well… ‘foreign’ to us?
Part of the answer might be that confidence comes more naturally to the residents of the land of the free and the home of the brave. Life got in the way for the people visited by Queer Eye. They didn’t hate themselves; they just forgot to appreciate or love themselves. Preaching to America the message of self-love is akin to preaching to the choir. Individuals may forget and lose sight of it but to the nation it’s a reminder rather than a lesson. I see it all the time at football; tell an American player that she played great in that match and she’ll thank you. Tell an Irish player she did well and she’ll go out of her way to protest and explain just how bad she was, how she besmirched the good name of the GAA with that performance and should never be allowed to play again. Somewhere along the line we Irish got it into our heads that compliments are responded to with self deprecation; “Penneys, $10” as opposed to “thanks”. Spoiler: it was colonisation what done it. But there’s no room for self-deprecation with the Fab Five; they model positive behaviour. They speak exclusively of the positives to be enhanced, never the negative they see (well, except when they happened upon a dirty kitchen, they didn’t mince their words there). They’re so affectionate with each other; it genuinely warms my heart when they hold hands or cuddle up on the couch together. When their person says something negative about themselves in an effort to manage the situation or conversation the Fab Five tease it out to find out where that comes from – like every time Tom from Georgia said ‘you can’t fix ugly’ and they never let him away with it. They will search for compliments to give and then throw them around like confetti. Contrast that with Ireland where you’ve poor Dermot Bannon who’s only trying to get us to love our gables and he’s considered ‘a bit much’.
I consider my time spent watching Queer Eye a form of continuous development training for living in America and managing the relentless positivity. As part of this ‘training’ I stop myself from focusing on the fact that I don’t believe a word out of Anthoni’s sorcerer-mouth (I can only describe his mouth as bewitching and I hate that I’m so attracted to him). In this training I don’t think, “Jonathan are you really ‘obsessed’ with that man’s hair? Does his hair really ‘preoccupy or fill the mind continually, intrusively, and to a troubling extent’??” No, I do not! Instead, I suspend disbelief and the more I do, the more I love the show. I need to embrace some of that effusiveness in real life and shake off some – though not all – of the cynicism. Cynicism comes from not wanting to be fooled (really, I remind you of a modern-day Audrey Hepburn? In my Roscommon shirt??) or not wanting to be wrong. But fuck it, what’s the point if being right leaves us to feeling shite? I will continue to watch Queer Eye, buy into it all and believe every word that comes out of every one of their mouths and next time I go into the coffee place I might just believe Jesse when she says she loves my Target shorts and my thrift-store shirt! Or I’ll smile and thank her, baby steps I suppose.
But, what’s quite un-American of Queer Eye – neutral almost – is their refusal to believe or accept that anyone can do it all by themselves. The perception of whether or not a person alone can ‘fix’ themselves is surprisingly political. Men tend to think they have to do everything by themselves, women tend towards collaboration, many on the right believe that all anyone needs to thrive is within oneself whilst many on the left consider that what overwhelms us is linked to the nation’s inequalities. On top of that, the modern workplace and the self-help industry place on us the onus to fix ourselves rather than tackle the source of stress – i.e. it’s the junior doctor not practising mindfulness that’s the problem, not the 30hr work shifts they’ve to do. That’s why, when we are bombarded by the commercial gospel of self-help, it’s refreshing to be reminded of the importance of reaching out and asking for a hand. Nobody has their shit completely together all by themselves. Asking for help is central to the Queer Eye philosophy, evidenced most clearly by the Fab Five rocking up in the first place and the activities and exercises that encourage cooperation. I’m trying to take that on board, to break the cycle of making endless lists of solo endeavours that ultimately wane after a few weeks resulting in the notebook coming out again and a whole new set of lists being composed. If I succeed, the arse will fall out of the notebook industry.
The show is an international hit because the Fab Five don’t create new people in a week; they just bring out what was already there. We all have up-days and down-days, but we can tip the balance in favour of up-days by taking the compliments and believing them, shaking off some of that cynicism and asking for help when we need it. Or by dumping all my our Dunnes’ cardigans and replacing them with proper blazers, not buying clothes too big for me us and throwing on a bit of lipstick. Or whatever. Either way, balm thy soul and get thee some Queer Eye loveliness into your TV diet.
And don’t watch it hungover. Unless you want to cry out the toxins, in which case you totally should watch it.
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