9 - Fashioning self-care: Queer Eye, affect and makeover culture

Summary

Premiering in February 2018, Netflix's Queer Eye provides an update of Bravo's earlier reality TV hit, Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. The reboot maintains the structure of the Fab Five – five experts who help makeover subjects in fashion, culture, food and wine, grooming and design – while updating the model to extend beyond straight men. The new Queer Eye tackles makeovers for subjects from a range of gender, sexuality, ability, class, race and national backgrounds. This chapter will focus on Tan France and Jonathan Van Ness, the fashion and grooming experts, respectively, on the 2018 reboot. France and Van Ness are arguably the breakout stars of the new series, with robust followings on social media, books, podcasts and YouTube series as part of their larger celebrity brands. This success points to the potency of fashion and beauty content within reality TV cultures and the branding potential for cast members in these areas.

Within the logic of the new Queer Eye, makeovers are positioned within the culture of self-care, and makeover subjects are encouraged to pursue grooming and fashion makeovers as a tool of caring for themselves and of projecting that care outward. In line with reality TV's history of providing experts for audiences, France and Van Ness provide instruction not only for the show's makeover subjects, but also for the home audience in how to pursue the best representation of self-care through fashion and grooming practices. This chapter will root this discourse on the show within larger trends in fashion and beauty branding towards self-care, to consider how reality television reverberates larger fashion and beauty ideologies to audiences. The kinder take on makeover TV represented in the Queer Eye reboot reflects larger conversations about inclusivity and body positivity within the fashion and beauty industries that seek to widen these spaces with inclusive sizing, diverse palettes and affordability.

Through the lens of Tan France and Jonathan Van Ness, this chapter will additionally examine the role of the expert in reality TV media and the affective relationship this role produces with audiences. Through close formal and textual analysis of the show and related social media content, it will be especially interested in the affective differences that occur in the spectatorial relationship to expert culture from reality TV to social media with its documentation of everyday life.