The Perfect Partnership

Sometime in spring 2020, Queer Eye’s foodie, Antoni Porowski, became the face of BetterHelp, a smartphone app promising easy mental health via mobile therapy. On the show, despite the inference that his nonchalance was the product of a satisfied (well-fed) life, his reliably basic cooking advice—sold as accessible, practical, and unpretentious—made him an avatar for a dreaded archetype: the mediocre gay who leans on his looks for currency. The partnership was the safest, most unassailable thing he could do for his career, shielded as it was with a noble cause, and presumably effective, given his homebody demeanor and dark-circled bedroom eyes, which suggest that deeper, underneath the baloney, lies a Donnie Darko nihilism since paved with cheese. That in the wake of our nightmares, steady complacency is something we can all aspire to.