Queer Eye 4 This Straight Guy Equals Hope 4 America
Sure, I'd heard of the Netflix series "Queer Eye" (as it is now known) prior to this week and had a vague idea of the format of the show. This week we watched it. We didn't go back to the first season to start it, but we started with the first episode of the current season.
Mind Blown.
Not only was my mind completely blown - the first show had me in tears at least three times. I was in no way prepared to watch Tom, a self-confessed redneck who has settled on the fact that he is ugly, hugging gay men and calling them "brother". As someone who spent one hour a week for a couple years with a good shrink, I could tell right off that Tom has terrible self-esteem issues and is hiding behind his scraggly beard and "ugliness". The Fab Five zeroed in on the same targets.
Between them, the five touch on pretty much every touch stone that needs to be overturned in Tom's life. The beauty and kick ass part of this episode for me, a QE rookie, was how cool it was to see Tom hanging around with these guys like it was just another day in a small southern town. He approached them with no reservations - he was open and honest with them. Even when he asked one of the married guys who was the man and who was the wife in his marriage. He was not being a snarky, smart ass - he was trying to learn about a culture and lifestyle that was foreign to him. Powerful.
It gets better - Episode three finds the guys working with a cop. Not only is Cory a cop, but he has tons of Trump/Pence lawn signs left over from the election in his garage. For those of you who have never seen the show, it involves a complete make-over. In Cory's case, they totally re-did his house - creating a space he could share with his wife and family and still incorporate the stuff in his life that is important to him: NASCAR and having his friends over. They re-did his hair, bought him a new wardrobe and dropped untold amounts of money into his house - bought some duds for his wife and kids and sent them all to a Broadway show.
After all that - do you know what Cory said was the best part of the week for him? It was the time he spent driving and talking with Karamo brown (seen below sitting in the truck with Cory) about the horrible state of affairs between black men and cops. HOLY SHIT - they dove into this head on. Karamo admitted that he did not want to interact with Cory at all when he found out he was a cop.
Not going to spoil it - suffice to say it was uplifting and amazing and spoke to me about what this country IS SUPPOSED TO BE ALL ABOUT. These two guys spent some time talking with each other - operative word WITH, not AT, each other. They heard each other and came away from the time spent together with a new found understanding of the "other guy" and his perspective. Again, Cory claimed this was the BEST PART OF THE WHOLE SHEBANG for him. He was crying as he said it. Me too.
It was an amazing segment. Amazing.
I do not believe I am engaging in hyperbole when I say watching this television show has given me hope for our country. The message brought home episode and episode is that we are all people - we all want the same basic stuff; we want to be loved. We want to love whom we want to love. We want to create a life worth living - weather it is with a house full of kids reading the Bible and going to church or with a circle of gay friends. (One of the episodes finds them working with a young gay man who comes out to his step-mother at the end of the show.)
In short, all the work these guys do making over houses and wardrobes
takes a distant back seat to the heart punches they deliver in every episode.
Bravo - this is how we do it.
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