Author: Caitlin Ganswindt

Jonathan Van Ness Is Full of Surprises

Perhaps the most surprising, crowd-pleasing, and congenial television show to come out of the reboot craze of the last two years has been Netflix’s Queer Eye. The original Queer Eye for the Straight Guy (2003), which aired on Bravo for five seasons, featured the “Fab Five” making over schlubby straight men in New York City, stiff-arming them into adopting a more “metrosexual” lifestyle. One of the major criticisms the show faced was that its cast played into regressive gay male stereotypes, presenting an overly polished bunch who dispensed superficial fixes for all of life’s issues—in a breezy, flair-filled manner, of course. In marketing the new show, Netflix conveyed the reboot’s updated tone by focusing on a soundbite from Tan France, the show’s resident fashion expert. In the clip, he says “the original show was fighting for tolerance, while the new series is working toward acceptance.” This go-round, the Fab Five is more diverse, more textured, and allowed to go deeper with the people whose lives they’re making over. Their problem-solving approach tends to work from …