Not pretty enough - Generation Q

The great power of television is its ability to reinforce or change people's personal convictions almost subconsciously--especially the opinions of teenagers. Play a music video enough times on MTV, and suddenly a nobody becomes a star. Talent is not the top criterion: Beauty and commercial appeal are the necessary resume check marks.

So how does that play out in the few shows directed at teens that include images of gay people? A few months ago MTV aired a True Life special that was anything but. The focus was a private queer-only school in Dallas and its half-dozen misfit students. While I applaud MTV for taking the initiative in airing the special, I can't help but criticize the content. Simply put, there was no one for most teenagers to relate to and no one to glorify. Every one of my straight classmates who watched the show said that it gave them a definition of "gay" that wasn't really true to what they knew, and while the Dallas kids' struggles are worth reporting, I can't see teens as a group caring.

As superficial as it sounds, youths want to watch beautiful people dealing with problems they can relate to. Gay content directed at teens needs to be put into the same pretty package that everything else is put in--remembering that brains can be packaged with the looks.

That's the trick of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy: five gay guys who are young, witty, good-looking, and gay and who appeal to a wide variety of viewers, gay and straight alike. I'm not saying we need to hide any side of the gay community. But to make an impact in the teen market, where everything is lit in glamourous lights, programmers need to remember that pretty is important and a pressing social issue is, Who am I going to take to prom?

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