Queer Eye: Stories Behind the Stories, Ep. 6
I’m not sure some of you will like me after this one. But, I’m willing to risk it.
If you don’t, just watch the episode because it features Karamo in a kimono and Tan jumping up and down like a club kid and beach ready Antoni and skeptical Bobby and flirty Jonathan. I live!
We’re more than halfway through the season, so I suspected there might be at least one throwback to the original Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, in which the Fab5 set their sights on ideas about masculinity. This episode does not disappoint.
In episode 6, we meet Ryan aka DJ High Def. He hails from Point Pleasant, NJ. By day, he works for his family’s business (begun by his dad) as a property manager. By night and by weekend, he works as a DJ down the shore. (Simmer down grammarians. Technically, it should be “at the Jersey shore,” but no New Jerseyan says it that way. We say “down the shore.”) There are parallels here between Ryan and Rahanna and business capital, specifically that the prosperity of Ryan’s family’s business is contingent on New Jersey’s own history of redlining, restrictive covenants, and bank practices. I am more interested in discussing Ryan’s understanding of his own masculinity.
Ryan struggles to articulate himself as the man he wants to be. First, he struggles to articulate his desired career path. He wants to quit the family business and pursue music and DJing full time. In his interviews, Ryan talks a little about measuring up to his father and his father confirms that might be a possibility in their conversation with Karamo. Second, Ryan also wants to settle down and start a family. He admires his brothers’ lives which include his wonderful sisters-in-law and his nephews. Ryan’s mother, in the nominators’ interview, says that he has just not found the right girl because he isn’t looking in the right places. Bobby, right on cue (meaning just when I was thinking it) said, “maybe he’s not looking for the right girl.” And, Jonathan rightfully, in a playfully Van Ness-esque way, reminds us to think outside the gender binary. During his episode, Ryan consistently laments his lack of romantic partnership, even admitting that he bought his home for his planned-for family.
I do not think there is anything wrong with admiring the example a parent has set for you as a provider, homemaker, cook, business person, et cetera. Nor is there anything wrong with wanting a family. However, Ryan seems to be participating in compulsory heterosexuality. What is that?
Glad you asked.
In 1980, Adrienne Rich (yep, the poet) popularized the term in her essay “Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence.” Compulsory heterosexuality is the idea that heterosexuality is assumed as the norm. Not only is it assumed as the norm, but it is also enforced as such because of a deep commitment to heteronormativity and patriarchy. For example, people are assumed to be heterosexual until proven otherwise or until they come out. This is the assumption not just of people interacting with other people, but also people interacting with systems and institutions. The fact that the US had to legalize gay marriage indicates that marriage itself (as a cultural, legal, and social institution) was understood as heterosexual until mandated otherwise. And, quite frankly, very often is still understood that way. Such is the pervasiveness of compulsory heterosexuality.
As a graduate student, I came to understand compulsory heterosexuality though another term: compulsory able-bodiedness. Compulsory able-bodiedness, coined by Robert McRuer in Crip Theory: Cultural Signs of Queerness and Disability, functions similarly to compulsory heterosexuality and, according to McRuer, the two are inextricably bound: historically and culturally speaking. That is, one is presumed able-bodied/able-minded until proven otherwise. And, when one has a disability, able-bodiedness/able-mindedness is treated as preferable. This occurs so much so that the disabled are forced to pass (e.g., President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Barbara Bush, Aristotle Onassis, Tionne “T-Boz” Watkins, Toni Braxton, and others) or forced to participate in systems that exceptionalize them. In narratives, compulsory able-bodiedness/able-mindedness often appears in a story’s resolution: when the story ends, the disability has to be resolved in some way, usually either by curing or killing the disabled person. That is an example of how disability gets erased because of a deep commitment to able-bodiedness/able-mindedness. Both queerness under compulsory heterosexuality and disability under compulsory able-bodiedness are assumed to be aberrations rather than a part of the variety of humanity.
In Ryan’s story, compulsory heterosexuality and compulsory able-bodiness are inextricably linked. To remain attractive, Ryan works out a lot and goes tanning frequently. G(ym) T(an) L(aundry). G.T.L. Hello! His understanding of himself as sufficiently masculine relies on his physicality and physical appearance as young and able-bodied. This is all so that he is understood as attractive to the right kind of women. In other words, his heterosexuality is dependent on his able-bodiedness and his youth. It is dependent on his understanding of able-bodiedness as the only kind of normal.
Here’s the rub.
This version of masculinity is keeping Ryan from joy. First, Ryan tries so hard to ensure his able-bodiedness that he exposes himself to cancer-causing radiation consistently. Jonathan reminds him of this when they talk about his tanning habit. Jonathan also reminds him of this when the Fab5 leave him after all the reveals: if you want to go back in that tanning bed, just think about your **** falling off.
More interesting to me, JVN tells him to think about the psychological repercussions of performing this kind of compulsory heterosexuality/able-bodiedness. JVN and Ryan have a conversation before Ryan gets his new haircut. Ryan confesses that he goes to the tanning bed because he thinks he looks sick. Jonathan tells him to think about what he’s saying and doing. Literally, he is saying that his skin as it is on him looks unhealthy. Further, every time he goes to the tanning bed, he rehearses this message that his skin as it appears on his body, the way he presents to the world, is unacceptable.
Second, Ryan tries so hard to live up to his father and his brothers’ examples, that he cannot articulate that music is what brings him joy. That’s the career path he wants to pursue. Here is compulsory heterosexuality at work. Its insistence on a specific norm of gender isolates those who wish to pursue dreams different from the ones that are considered acceptable. If the heteronormative masculine option is to participate in the family business, get a wife, and have children, then pursuing music seems antithetical to that because it is not sufficiently masculine under that rubric. When Ryan and Karamo talk to Ryan’s dad, they have a breakthrough moment. Ryan’s father spells it out for him: that he need not compare himself to others for the family to be proud of him; they love him as he is.
I’ll go a little further. It takes the Fab5 to explain to Ryan that he has a family. In his mind, the only acceptable family is the one with a wife and children. Right now, Ryan considers himself a hanger-on to the larger extended family, rather than an integral part of it. Queer folks know that family is not just comprised of a father, mother, brother, and sister. Family has all different kinds of configurations: blood relations, chosen family, aunts, uncles, cousins, play-cousins. When Bobby says to Ryan, that he has a family and he is an uncle, it should remind him that he is enough as he is. He need not wait to “have a family.” He has a family currently. This also should remind viewers that they too are part of families already. They need not wait for the mythical “family to come” in order to behave as though they are part of a family or believe themselves to be integral or important to family or responsible to their families.
This version of masculinity screams and allows for incompetence. Ryan’s mother voices his need for a romantic partner in the nominator video; she also brings over meals and dessert for him. When Ryan himself talks about the disarray in his office, he says “I need a wife.” The Fivers immediately react with horror and tell him to apologize to his mother. To me, this draws a connection between the kind of masculinity that is endorsed by those around him and his own embrace of it, both to his detriment. He does not complete the planning and execution to set up his office, but is okay (even if jokingly) with the idea that another person, namely a woman, namely a wife, must do this.
Ryan also cannot have certain open conversations with his family. Compulsory heterosexuality looks at intimacy between two men as too close to queerness for comfort. So, emotional growth in safe spaces becomes an anathema or, at the very least, taboo. When Ryan speaks to his father, he tells Karamo that they do not talk about “these things.” For those folks thinking that there could be other causes for this lack of communication, you’re absolutely right. And, yet, their interaction demonstrates that Ryan and his father needed Karamo to run interference during their emotional scrimmage. Compulsory heterosexuality is everywhere, and more insidiously so when it is thought of as a normal part of a relationship. White compulsory heterosexuality tends to require a magical Negro of some kind to run emotional interference. I’m not going to elaborate. You’ve seen enough movies, and read Morgan Parker’s New-York-Times-profiled collection (Magical Negro). I said what I said.
Here’s the thing: compulsory heterosexuality would suggest that domestic tasks are a plus for a man but necessary for a woman. For example, Ryan does not know how to cook for himself and does not know how to host, claiming that he only has people over for the Super Bowl. The fact that his mother performs these tasks sets him up to believe that is a woman’s domain to know how to cook and host. Be clear: this could be his mother’s choice. It could be any woman’s choice. It is not their duty. And, it is also not a bonus when a man performs these tasks. To think of it as a bonus for a man reinforces the idea that it is not a skill for everyone to learn. Unfortunately, Antoni does not dispel this when he calls men cooking “sexy” since that relies on the idea that the skill is exceptional for them. I’d like to interpret that as Antoni saying that caring for someone by cooking for them is sexy. Alas, some interpretations must be willful.
Heartbreakingly but not surprisingly, the most toxic example of compulsory heterosexuality/able-bodiedness occurs around the issue of looks. When Tan goes through Ryan’s closet, he asks Ryan, “what are you afraid they’re gonna see?” Ryan answers, “My face.” After all that gym-ing, tanning, and laundering, he thinks he is the male version of a butter face. (Usually, this applies to women, like Oh, her body is great, but her face…abbreviated to “butter face.”) After further conversation, he says that DJing is not an old man’s game.
I think it is important to note how other -isms work their way into these conversations. Here, the -ism is ageism. JVN clocks Ryan’s anti-aging creams and tries to get him to see what a gain it is to be pro-aging, pointing out that the things we do for anti-aging can actually age us. I’d add that compulsory heterosexuality has a shelf life. Because it relies on compulsory able-bodiedness, specific norms of ability, youth, masculinity, it limits the way people can engage with the natural process of aging. We’re lucky to age, as JVN notes. But, if we’re wedded to a notion of normal that precludes those over 30, then we’ll continuously seek a normal that is never within reach. That’s part of the problem here. That’s why Ryan doesn’t want anyone to see his face. That’s why he works so hard to demonstrate from far away that he’s sufficiently masculine.
When we get to the end, I’m excited to see everyone support him in following his dreams of MC-ing and DJ-ing. You can see his brothers try to get in on his clothes and his recipes and he does try to keep them all to himself. Share the love, sir!
That dinner (Antoni); those clothes (Tan); that haircut & health advice (Jonathan); that décor (Bobby); and that confession (Karamo) — those are all important first steps toward breaking the holds of compulsory heterosexuality and compulsory able-bodiedness/able-mindedness. Tellingly, Ryan clutches his dog at the end, and says “this is my kid,” fiercely demonstrating how hard it is to let go of these patterns and ideas. Ryan won’t be able to do it all at once and he won’t be able to do it on his own.
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