'Queer Eye' Uses Women for an Unconvincing Emotional Payoff

Media outlets and social media users rushed to celebrate the news. "Tom and Abby from Queer Eye have gotten engaged and we are far too emotional," was one fairly typical headline. "Love me a happy ending!! Now I’m crying omg so much love and happiness to you," commented a jubilant Twitter user.

Jackson’s attempts to win back his ex-wife’s affections shaped the narrative arc of the reboot's premiere episode, titled "You Can't Fix Ugly." "I love Abby more than anything. She says she loves me, I know I love her," Jackson told the Fab Five during his makeover. Later, with his facial redness toned down thanks to some Jonathan Van Ness-recommended green cover-up, Jackson asked Abby to a car show. She said yes.

With Abby and Jackson celebrating their re-engagement and Queer Eye announcing its second season, we might ask if a relationship resuscitated under the hopeful watch of Netflix well-wishers around the world, all poised and ready to write a thousand congratulatory tweets, will stand the course. After all, Abby and Jackson have broken up at least twice already (once before filming began, and again after the show aired). But it's not just Abby and Tom that leave us skeptical. Their relationship points to a wider, structural issue with the Netflix reboot, a question that can be summed up as follows: Are the women of Queer Eye just being used as the emotional payoff of the show?

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Queer Eye has been universally beloved, and with good reason. It’s exceptionally well cast, sentimental without being maudlin, and has just enough intrigue to keep Internet conspiracy forums occupied (no, Antoni can’t cook, yes, Tan’s hair really is just naturally like that). But Queer Eye’s narrative arc relies upon female affirmation and romantic endorsement in a way that’s occasionally discomfiting to watch.

All reality TV is structured around common narrative tropes and arcs. Queer Eye’s success is—with the aid of expansive production values and Netflix’s Leviathan budget—in elevating these restrictive conventions to something approximating art.

Unlike the original TV show from which Queer Eye takes its name, 2018’s reboot reflects our more accepting, woke times. Whereas the original 2003 Queer Eye lineup were sometimes accused of reinforcing the "bitchy gay" stereotype, the new Fab Five don’t pass judgment on tragic, lonely heterosexual men; instead, they teach a message of acceptance and self-worth. "Confidence is sexy," advises Van Ness, cutting Jackson’s hair. "Knowing who you are is sexy."

Every episode of Queer Eye tracks the contours of this narrative arc as reliably as designer Bobby Berk trots out an identical mid-century modern aesthetic when redesigning his subjects’ homes. During each episode, the Fab Five teach each makeover subject how to dress, groom, and keep their home, but really they're operating at a more elemental level, literally coaching their subjects to realize their own self-worth.

Transformation complete, the makeover subject unveils his new style and more tolerant value system to the woman in their life—whether that's their wife, mom, stepmom, ex, or love interest. It's a narrative that plays out in roughly six out of the reboot's eight episodes. But what choice does she have but to react enthusiastically? Despite Queer Eye's enlightened credentials, it often relies on women to provide the emotional heavy-lifting required of an uplifting reality TV conclusion. And failure is simply not an option.

At times, this requirement for positive affirmation makes for unsettling viewing. In "You Can’t Fix Ugly," Jackson’s attempts to win back Abby, the "love of his life" is seeded multiple times throughout the episode. "I love Abby more than anything," Jackson tells Antoni Porowski in an early heart-to-heart. "I wanna spend my life with her." The inference is clear: The makeover’s success hinges upon whether or not Abby accepts his romantic overtures.

There’s no way of knowing whether Abby’s decision to rekindle her relationship with Jackson is sincere. I like to think it is. But consider, for a moment, that you are Abby. Your ex-husband—who you still have affection for, who has literally applied makeup for you—asks you on a date, in full view of a production crew, at the end of days or even weeks of presumably expensive filming. Do you acquiesce, thinking it would be cruel not to? Or do you disappoint him along with the Fab Five and all their fans?

Other episodes rely on women to provide emotional catharsis for the makeover subjects. In perhaps the most moving episode of the series, "To Gay Or Not To Gay," the Fab Five plan a party for A.J. Brown to come out to his stepmom. At the party, Brown pulls his stepmom into a bedroom to tell her. As Brown sobs, his stepmom smiles and comforts him.

Watching the concluding scenes of "To Gay Or Not To Gay," I felt uncomfortable for Brown's stepmom. The episode hinges upon whether or not she'll accept or reject his sexual identity. But the emotional reality of the moment makes it hard for us to believe Brown's revelation is in any way unexpected for her, even if the conventions of reality TV require her to feign surprise. Ultimately, the real message of "To Gay Or Not To Gay" is buried under this simulated catharsis: that Brown's fear of coming out was far more terrifying than its reality.

At other times, Queer Eye is more straightforwardly cringe-inducing. In "Below Average Joe," the Fab Five makeover a struggling comedian who still lives at home with his parents in his childhood bedroom. They scour his bed sheets for semen and, when they find none, conclude that it’s because his parents' bedroom is next door, and the walls are thin. (To check, Van Ness and France stand in each room and make sex noises.) They relocate Joe’s bedroom to the garage, coach him through his comedy routine, and put him in a bomber jacket. ("I can be the quarterback of the football team!" Joe jokes.) Here, too, the inference is clear: Joe's makeover will be successful if he's able to pick up women.

Later, as Joe lands jokes after joke for an adoring audience, we notice a red-haired woman with orange nails called Chloe sitting prominently in the front row. Chloe congratulates him after the show and Joe asks her on a date. Joe kisses her, his mouth all puckered like he's just been eating grapefruit, and then, with the camera still awkwardly hovering on them, they performatively kiss again. A rapturous Van Ness, watching via video link with the rest of the Fab Five, convulses in some sort of spiritual experience on the sofa.

But the message remains the same: glow up, and women will find you attractive—or be forced to simulate romantic interest in you to appease the TV crews stationed nearby. It's an uncomfortable and oddly unnecessary lesson, given that Joe had already aced the test the Fab Five gave him: to have a successful comedy show. The manner in which Chloe is tossed into the plot right at the end of "Below Average Joe" emphasizes a troubling thread throughout many of the episodes: We know very little about the show's women, because they are never seriously asked how they feel or what they want. Yes, Queer Eye is a male makeover show, but this dynamic fosters a depiction of one-sided relationships, implying that if a man feels that he's being his best self, women owe him their love. Or, as Bobby confidently informs Jackson: "If you open your heart and your mind, knowing there's somebody else for it, it'll happen."

The late emphasis on Joe's romantic interaction with a character that the producers haven't properly introduced feels like a curveball thrown late in the episode. Joe's improved confidence, we are meant to realize, is secondary to his new-found ability to impress women—and Chloe functions solely to demonstrate his transformation from dweeb to Lothario.

Then there's the episode "Camp Rules," in which Bobby, a devout Christian man from Georgia, wants help throwing his wife the wedding reception he failed to deliver the first time around. As Bobby invites his partner Vera to dance in their newly renovated living room, he whispers, "This is for you." But you have to wonder if Vera's dream reception should have included any sort of consultation—as opposed to having the event sprung on her by her newly madeover husband.

Beyond making for discomfiting viewing, Queer Eye's treatment of women exposes fundamental structural issues that are linked to the conventions within which the show operates. Reality TV as a genre typically relies upon the emotional labor of women—whether it’s the slanging matches of the Real Housewives franchises, or the women in Geordie Shore breaking up and smoothing over yet another fight between the male stars. Sometimes, shows take on darker tones: women are gaslighted, manipulated, or even abused, to sate the appetites of their TV audience.

Although much less Machiavellian in its machinations, due to its very nature as a makeover show for mostly heterosexual men, Queer Eye's reliance upon women for climactic affirmation cruelly robs them of their free will, or even the capacity to appear as fully realized human beings. Were any of Queer Eye's women to reject the conventions of the show, say by refusing a date or acting anything other than delighted by their partner's makeover, they'd very likely be attacked online—a common occurrence for female reality TV contestants. In Queer Eye's universe, men are encouraged to become their full selves, but only at the cost of women being reduced to empty, platitude-affirming characters.

Queer Eye’s a great show—one of the best of the year, in fact. But even the best TV shows occasionally misstep (remember Gilmore Girls’ last season?) My message to the show runners ahead of season two: Stop treating women like emotional support animals. Also, Bobby: West Elm is not the only furniture store around.