HUMOR
....................▼....................
Aesthetic Engineering
G
ay men frequently complain that we’re
not portrayed accurately in the media:
The boys on Queer as Folk get laid too
much, the hoys on Will & Grace don’t get
laid enough, Sponge Bob SquarePants refuses to
come out, blah blah blah.
But finally there’s a TV show that reflects
the true essence of gay life— a groundbreaking
series that probes all the nuances of sexual ori
entation. I’m talking, of course, about Queer
Eye for the Straight Guy.
The new series on Bravo strives to “make
over the world, one straight man at a time,” an
impulse that runs deep in my psyche but that
troubles me nonetheless. You see, on the one
hand, I’m definitely a proponent of the Legally
Bloruie philosophy of improving the world
through beauty. Nothing makes me cry quicker
than Oprah’s makeover episodes— you know,
the ones where some mousy matron is given a
chic Marshall Fields outfit and a stylish ’do she’ll
never be able to redo when she gets home.
The moment when she cries to Oprah, “I’ve
never felt beautiful before” makes me melt like
wax (bikini wax, that is). It’s better than thera
py and definitely preferable to those annoying
segments where Dr. Phil tells people to con
front themselves. Confront yourself, Phil, I
want to see the chick with the dark rex its get
decent highlights.
I can’t help it. I was bom with the
makeover gene. To this day I still don’t under
stand why Dorothy would give up a pair of ruby
slippers and a hair extension just to go back to
Kansas. I was the little boy who tried to con
vince his mother to wear velvet hot pants like
Shirley Partridge. And I was the teen-ager
who, for his 16th birthday, asked to get his
colors done. (I’m a Winter, by the way.)
Gay men and makeovers
THE GOSPEL
ACCORDING
TO MARC
b y M a r c A cito
Yet, strangely enough, like many self-appoint
ed arbiters of style, I’ve been known to espouse a
personal kx>k bordering on the extraterrestrial.
Lcxik at Joan Rivers, if you dare. The woman’s
eyes are on the sides of her head, like a mackerel.
And the quintet from Queer Eye dresses like the
touring company of Rent. Just go to the show’s
Web site and you’ll see Carson, the “fashion
savant," wearing a blazer 1 could swear was made
out of my Aunt Gloria s sofa set.
R
egardless, those of us who pore over Genre,
Vogue and our own pores get a bum rap.
You can idle away as many hours as you
want cultivating a beautiful garden, and you’ll
get compliments galore. But spend the same
amount of time cultivating a beautiful txxly
and everyone calls you shallow and narcissistic.
(O f course, they also call you for dates.)
Critics of beauty fail to understand that
admiring a gorgeous person is one of life’s great
pleasures. I, for one, regularly endure The Other
H alf just so I can fantasize about subletting
space in Mario Lopez’s dimples.
But the idea of re-creating straight guys in
our own image also concerns me. While gays
have been telling the world what is beautiful
since the Greeks, it’s only recently that straight
guys have listened. More and more you’re see
ing heterosexuals who are so exfoliated
they shine like precious stones and
who spend enough on hair
pnxlucts to pay off the
national debt. Madison
Avenue calls them
Metrosexuals.
By increasing
the number of
fashionistas in
the world, the
standards for
male stylish
ness will
become even
more exact-
ing, not to
mention
exhausting. As
it is, with all the
plucking, shaving,
dying, gelling,
bleaching, moisturizing
and exfoliating, personal
griximing is a part-time job.
The morticians on Six Feet Under
prepare a body quicker.
All this Aesthetic Engineering makes me
wonder whether I’m a pawn in Abercrombie &
Fitch’s nefarious plot for world domination. If
so, maybe it’s time I put my energy toward
something nobler, like joining those hair
dressers bringing beauty relief to Afghanistan.
With this thought in mind, I went to lunch
with a do-gtxxling friend of mine, a spiritually
evolved man who values gixxl works over gixxl
lcxiks. “Nelson,” 1 said to him, “you obviously
don’t care how you ltxik. What’s your secret !"
He regarded me in that glassy-eyed way that
New Age people do and replied, "Marco,
you need to kxik beyond the surface
and concentrate on the things
that tmly matter."
1 gazed into his
soulful eyes— so full of
experience and wis
dom— and one
thought sprang
into my mind as
the thing that
tmly mattered
most. “Nel
son," I said,
my voice
trembling at
the notion,
"have you ever
thought about
waxing your eye
brows V'
What can I say? Deep
down I’m very superfi
cial.
And that, my friends, is The
Gospel According to Marc. JH
M a r c A c it o ’ s own eccentric sense of style can he
seen at www.marcacito.com.
A string of hits,
a cast of two.
one
Forever Plaid meets
I Do, I Do!
tickets
with
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