Queens for a Day:<i>Queer Eye for the Straight Guy</i>and the Neoliberal Project

This paper moves beyond a conventional critique of gay stereotyping on Bravo's popular makeover show Queer Eye for the Straight Guy to consider how the show puts gay cultural expertise to work to reform a heterosexual masculinity that is compatible with the neoliberal moment. At issue are the newly public acknowledgement of gay taste and consumer expertise; the “crisis of masculinity” that requires that heterosexual men must now attend to their relationships, image, and domestic habitus; and the remaking of the straight guy as not only an improved romantic partner—the metrosexual—but a more flexible, employable worker. The author concludes by considering how camp deconstructs some of Queer Eye's most heteronormative aims, even while leaving its class and consumption rationales intact.