As I'm sure everyone has noticed, there has been an increase in the amount of gays and lesbians being featured in the media today. Around the 1970s the first television shows began to feature gays and lesbians and it actually became trendy to feature them in the shows. The gays and lesbians were always portrayed as the "flaming homo" or the "butch lesbian" to really show and enforce the idea of homosexuality. It would almost be like, "I may be a little feminine, but at least I'm not gay".
Once Ellen DeGeneres came out during an episode of Ellen, there has been a surge of gay and lesbian characters featured in the media. At first, they were incorporated into the shows to show how heterosexual the other characters were, to show how acting hetero is the "normal" way to be. But over recent years, we start to see more gays and lesbians coming into mainstream media such as "Queer as Folk", and "Queer Eye". In "Queer Eye", we actually see a shift from gays just being there to be trendy, to heterosexual men asking for help and advice in terms of fashion to help them be more successful in the world.
As you can see, a show like this was unheard of before until recent years. It seems as if it is slowly becoming more acceptable to be gay and is shown by the increase in visibility.
In Queer Eye these hetero men were not only asking for advice on fashion but on everything in their lives! They had to admit how pathetic their wardrobe was, how messy their house was, and how uncooth their hygiene was. What man would use 2-1 shampoo and body wash? They would send a video to the Fab 5 begging for their help in getting their lives together, usually for a big event such as a proposal, business meeting, or first date with a girl. The first season of the show as strictly about helping these men. But in the later seasons of the show it turned into a big infomerical telling you to buy this not that. It has been a huge stereotype that gay men have the best fashion sense out of anyone in the world. Which is totally not true! I think Elle was a big help in getting the LGBT community visible on t.v. It started when she came out on the episode of her first show which was cancelled soon after because of her coming out. But she didn't quit she started her own talk show. I like that she doesn't use her sexuality to drive the show but her love for people to drive it. She's not a gay woman who has her own talk show but a woman who owns her own talk show who happens to be gay.
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