The rise and fall of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy (page 3)
by Joel Dossi, January 3, 2005

In an effort not to overdo a good thing, however, Queer Eye’s producers purportedly limited sponsors to one paid product placement per show. Fortune magazine reported Oral-B saying it was quoted a $20,000 price tag for one product mention. The magazine also relayed a show spokesman’s response that there were no fixed prices for placements. After the first placed product, however, all highlighted items had to be chosen by the Fab 5, and had to be donated to the production.

Perhaps the most telling evidence regarding the business of Queer Eye came last spring when Pier 1 Imports unceremoniously canned their overweight spokeswoman Kirstie Alley in favor of The Fab 5’s design expert Thom Filicia.

But when the retailer experienced a 5.9% drop in same-store sales over the summer, they booted the newly hired Filicia. Chief Executive Marvin Girouard rationalized the sacking to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, saying, “I told (Filicia) when I met him, ‘You really need to be measured by the number of people that come into the stores,’ and our traffic numbers have been weak.”

Some will say Queer Eye’s meteoric rise and subsequent fall is really only a matter of numbers and not a looming forecast of gay representation on television.

But not if you talk with Queer as Folk’s Co-Executive Producer, Ron Cowen. “They are putting on images of gay people that are acceptable to straight people,” Cowen told gay reporters at the 2003 national meeting of the Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association. “Straight people are comfortable seeing gay people as hairdressers and as interior decorators. Straight people are comfortable laughing at sitcom characters who are either eunuchs or clowns. This is what straight people are comfortable with, and they are given images that they are comfortable with. So, of course they like the show.”

Slate Magazine’s Dana Stevens, would agree with Cowen’s summation, stating that out homosexuals on reality television was just a fad. Now reality TV has a new fad, Stevens writes, “fat people are the new gay people.”

As proof of the pudding, ex-Pier 1 spokeswomen Kirstie Alley is slated to star in Showtime’s upcoming reality series entitled Fat Actress.

But TV Guide’s Ted Johnson disagrees with all the fatalistic predictions about gays on TV.

Queer Eye is a great step forward, he said last summer. “I haven’t seen all the Queer Eyes, but I think it’s a great show. One person who has seen all of the shows is my mom, who calls me every week. She’ll call me asking, ‘Did you see it? Did you see it?’ My parents live in the Midwest, and this is their first exposure to gay life. They don’t watch Will & Grace. But for some reason, they have really taken to this show.

Johnson furthered, “One of the great things about it is the interaction between the gay men and straight men. Even on TV, there’s been this misconception that the two can’t mix.”

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