What Queer Eye Goes to Japan has to Teach Orphans, Foster Kids, and Adopted People

I am gaining weight. I don’t even know why, exactly, and that is the scariest part. I’d lost ten pounds pretty much out of the blue over a year ago, and I got used to pulling my pants down without having to unzip them. I got used to the fact that my legs were starting to look like arms and that my butt was essentially just a continuation of my back. The great thing about feeling skinny was that I also felt beyond reproach. I could walk down the street eating a huge cookie, and if someone called me a pig, it would be funny because I could eat like a pig but look still like a pencil and, chances are, the person calling me names couldn’t.

I love the Fab Five: Antoni, Jonathan, Karamo, Bobby, and Tan. I love the whole concept of the show Queer Eye: go into someone’s life who is struggling and, in a week, overhaul whatever is causing major problems: their house, their body, their relationships, and, always, their sense of self-worth.

Creating Queer Eye: We’re in Japan was a bold move. None of the guys speak Japanese, for one. For two, the Japanese aren’t generally considered the most open people. To have five gay men walk into your house and look at and comment on your life takes an enormous amount of courage and trust. I mean, come on, it is the Japanese who cover their mouths when they speak sometimes so you don’t see their teeth. This is a culture based on fitting in, on quiet conformity.

They are no different from us. We also, we Americans, are a culture also based on quiet conformity. The catch is that because we are so loud we don’t always see ourselves this way.

Quiet conformity is like trying to light a match with one finger over the tip. Dylan Thomas said rage against the dying of the light for a reason. We are meant to flame, burn brightly, and then, finally, die, but, if you’ve really burned, you don’t want to go because the burning was so wonderful, and so you rage, you rage. If you miss the burn brightly part, you missed the point of being on the planet. But if you remain an unlit match, you can also live with the false belief that you are safe and may live forever; you may also criticize those who are flaming because they frighten you, they are doing what you fear most.

The news is, of course, that even unlit matches die, so you might as well burn as brightly as you can just for the experience of being alive and for the generosity of sharing your light with others so they can more clearly see.

I think one reason I am starting to put on weight is that I have also started to work out. I think the weight is muscle. The shock of realizing that my body carried trauma from being relinquished and adopted came on me slowly, and one way it manifested itself was in my inability to get through a yoga class without having to stop. I had become weak, unsteady, and my stomach was often so upset I was in danger of going into triangle and being that person who farts. Again and again. For the past three years it’s as if each fiber of my muscles was torn, and so if I tried to do any kind of exercise aside from walking, I would almost instantly feel sick. It was like I’d just finished an Ironman and I decided to go for a run. My body said, No. You are done. You have to rest.

For three years and a half years??

Yup.

Anyway. Today when I was on the Nordic Track my muscles were saying GO GO GO! and it was amazing. I worked OUT. I sweated. My legs are getting stronger, bigger. I am getting bigger, stronger.

To be big can be scary. It means you are seen, and if you are seen, chances are good you are no longer beyond reproach. In the four episodes of Queer Eye, We’re in Japan, Yoko, Makoto, Kan, Kae had all made themselves small on many levels. They were living and not living at the same time, and then the Fab Five walked into their lives, and I cried again and again as I watched the reveals and transformations take place.

When humans are living from their humanity they are so gorgeous. I dare you to watch this show and not fall deeply in love with Kan, Kan, Yoko, and Makoto (not to mention the Fab Five—those guys had my heart at hello). Actually, I don’t want to dare you because if you don’t fall in love with these four heart-forward people there is something scary about you, and you should probably get medical attention.

We are so vulnerable, so messy, so uncontained. Most of us spend long periods of our life in that terrifying stage between caterpillar and butterfly when we are a shit show of who even am I and we have to hide it because few of us want to go to work or sit at dinner with family a gelatinous mess, because we live in a world that, even though it may claim the opposite, champions quiet conformity.

To be an orphan or a foster care or adopted person is to be a human who was separated from the most important person in your life at an age when you were too young to fend for yourself. This type of separation is generally catastrophic for the nervous system and the sense of security and self-worth. One of the Fab Five, Bobby, was adopted, and I don't know how he would feel about his, but I can tell just from watching how he talks to people on the show that he was adopted. There is something…held back, stiff, and, I’m sorry, but fake, about him. I keep waiting for Bobby to step into the real Bobby.

God knows he’s already come so far. He’s out in the world a gay man. He lives in the public eye. What I said was not meant as a criticism. It was more about how complicated it is to be yourself when you lost your mother when you were young. The need to be beyond reproach even when you seem to not care is an epic battle between the need to express the self and the part of the brain that is desperately trying to protect you—Danger! Danger! Stay small! If you don’t hide, the tiger may see you and eat you up!

I am getting bigger. This does not mean I am going to take more from you. It means I have more to give: more strength, more energy, more of myself. It takes incredible strength to plant your flag in the soil of your life and say, I am here.

But tell me, after watching the four episodes of Queer Eye, We’re in Japan, is there one shred of doubt in your mind that the world is exponentially a better place because of the how much brighter, bigger, and more confident each person became?

Dear Orphans, Your mother did not give you up because she didn’t like you. It was never about you.

But it is now.

Burn brightly. Go out in flames.

And, sweet Bobby, I want to tell you the thing I believe every adoptee, foster kid, and orphan should be told on the daily by those who adore them I love you and will never leave.