Contesting Masculinity’s Makeover: Queer Eye, Consumer Masculinity, and “Straight-Acting” Gays

Abstract

This article analyzes conflicting and competing discourses about gay masculinities in and about Bravo’s Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. The author analyzes Queer Eye’s normalization of consumer masculinity, which rejects aspects of traditional masculinity and depends on vanity consumption. The author argues that consumer masculinity is at odds with the masculinities that the gay men on StraightActing.com are attempting to uphold. Their interpretations of Queer Eye differ significantly from academic media critic Kylo-Patrick Hart’s interpretation that Queer Eye is the most positive representation of gay men ever. It is in the struggle over mediated masculinity that the men of StraightActing.com find themselves paradoxically aligned with radical conservatives in fearing the impact of Queer Eye on heterosexual audiences but for completely contradictory reasons.