Many people are happy to acknowledge this and seek professional advice on taste--preferably for free in so-called "makeover" TV shows. There are now about a dozen of these, and the pattern goes like this: Friends report fashion-challenged individuals or owners of sloppily furnished apartments to the TV show crew. The show then sends a team of interior designers, craftsmen, hairdressers, beauticians, fashion experts, dance instructors, or cooking specialists to the location to transform everything and then broadcast it in detail with a before-and-after effect on television.

In "While You Were Out," the victim is lured out of their home for a while under some pretext, only to return and find it wonderfully renovated. In "Trading Spaces" (a show that, amusingly, originally came from Great Britain, where a similar lack of taste prevails), two neighbors swap homes for 48 hours and, with the help of designers and a lot of personal effort, transform the rooms into fancy lofts. From my personal statistics, I can tell you that 95% of all successfully treated individuals exclaim "Oh my Gosh!" when they see the changes. In almost all cases, they jump for joy, and only very rarely are there long faces because the designer went a bit overboard.

Currently, one new show is breaking all records: "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy." Instead of translating it literally, I'll tell you what it's about: A quintet of trendy, young, gay city men, known as the "Fab 5," act as a mobile task force for all sorts of problem cases. Most often, these are bachelors living in completely rundown apartments with crusty bathtubs, eating pizza and drinking canned beer, wearing jeans and flannel shirts, and holding lifelong non-dancer passes.

Since gay men often engage more with matters of taste, fashion, style, art, and personal grooming than their heterosexual counterparts, this is usually a great success. The quintet then extensively shows the "slob" how to behave at the table, for example, how to eat a lobster, take a date to the disco, and then invite them to the newly renovated apartment. There are no taboos: hairy fellows might be taken to the beauty salon to have their back hair waxed or use the brand-new Norelco nose hair trimmer to tackle the "nose hair" situation.

In doing so, the "Fab 5" deliberately play with gay stereotypes, especially the fashion expert sometimes behaves in a really flamboyant manner. But it's clear that this is not meant seriously; rather, it mostly serves to tease out any small homophobic tendencies in the "Straight Guy" and to embarrass him. The show is also very well received in gay circles; all our friends are enthusiastic "Fab 5" fans. And even conservative America outside of San Francisco seems to like the show.

After the work is done, the Fab Five always sit together in style with a glass of wine and watch live on TV as their new protegé gets ready for a nice evening out with his girlfriend, who, of course, is almost beside herself with joy over the modernized apartment when they return home. Naturally, the five also gossip extensively and roll their eyes when someone doesn't apply the suggested hair gel correctly, tears apart the lobster with their hands, or quickly stuffs clothes lying around the freshly tidied apartment under the bed instead of in the closet.

The captured TV images in this newsletter show the "Fab 5" only on Oprah Winfrey, who invited the guys to her mega-show because of their groundbreaking success. That's because the show "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy" is airing on a cable channel that I recently canceled due to a fee increase. Surely, someone will soon call us at home to offer it to us again at a special price -- but until then, we have to do without.

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• More topics you might be interested in:

  	California Chaos - The Recall
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  	An Ode to the Internet
  	Time For College: Schools in America (Part 2)