Queer Eye For the Oversharing Ex-Wife of the Straight Guy?
So, I run TheBESTSITEEVAARRR!!!1!! this little pop culture portal called PanFandom, and one of our most popular fandoms is Queer Eye For the Straight Guy, which is largely due to the fact that it's the only such community of its kind for the fandom. Also, Brooding_Soul writes killer recaps of the show and the forums get a lot of traffic, so BRAVO's official show web site links to us quite prominently and frequently. Although they posted that Thom hates our color scheme. Whatev, Filicia. I wasn't crazy about those red light-up coffee tables you bought that redneck that one time, either.

Anyway, a few weeks ago, Queer Eye aired this episode called "Do You Know The Mullet Man?" in which a man wants to get rid of his spectacular mullet and be a Make Better so that he wouldn't embarrass his daughter at her upcoming birthday party. He was portrayed as being a very sweet and loving father and the ep had a lot of "Awwww!" moments. As he always does every week, Brooding_Soul opens a thread about the episode, which can be found here.

Half a dozen posts down, someone named Liz comes in to post her letter to Bravo. You see, apparently Mark Faries, the man featured in that episode, is a big stinky liar. That wasn't his daughter - that was the daughter of his shiny new wife. His REAL daughter, he lied to and told her not to come that weekend. (This has been verified by a half dozen different sources, and even in the ep, he mentions to Carson that it's his stepdaughter, and Carson seems very surprised.) Here's the letter:


Dear Sirs:

I am not a fan of reality television shows but I have always enjoyed Queer Eye for the Straight Guy for the simple reason that it is a show about people helping people. As corny as that may sound, I much prefer watching a program that highlights the best in people rather than one that shows how cruel and cold we are capable of being to each other. It's nice to sit back and root for the straight guy in his quest for self-improvement, with the ebullient aid of the Fab 5, but moreover that his quest is for a greater good, the love of his lady or his family.

So you must understand my shock, disbelief and outrage when I watched on Saturday evening, April 17, 2004 the episode featuring Mark Faries. As the episode unfolded I became more and more appalled at the total disregard for the truth. I can only assume you were unaware that Mr. Faries has a biological daughter, Crystal Lynn Faries that just turned eighteen on March 16. My heart broke for her as I watched you portray this man as a loving father. It was painful to hear his proclamations of fatherly love to his step-daughter and not one word about his own child. What kind of reality do you deal in? Don't you require your applicants to be honest? How could you parade this man to millions of Americans as a loving father? Did you question why there were two beds in Karly's room? One belongs to Crystal. She has visitation with her father one weekend of every month. Now I don't know when you filmed this show, but Crystal's father told her she couldn't come in February because he was busy.

I wouldn't have taken issue with this episode had it been about Mark doing his transformation for Roe. But it was clearly all about Karly and what he could do for her. I found it extremely difficult to watch and at some points had to walk away. I can only imagine the pain it caused Crystal. Crystal is a beautiful eighteen-year-old honor student that will be attending college in the fall. She is a wonderful young lady in spite of her father and did not deserve to have to endure this pain and humiliation. Her father has flat out refused to contribute to her education in any way and yet you held him up for all to see as a candidate for Father of the Year.

Needless to say, for a reality television show, you need to make sure you have all the facts. I will never be able to watch this show again knowing that what I am watching may very well be all lies. I certainly hope when you help the next straight guy get it together for his girlfriend that you make sure he doesn't have a wife. Mostly, I hope no child has to endure what Crystal Faries was forced to.

I'm sure your feeling on this matter is that it's not your responsibility to know the truth. If so, then don't package your show as reality television. Because in reality, you hurt a terrific young lady.

**************

Thank you for listening.

Liz

I have to admit I did smirk at the whole "I hope no child ever has to go through the trauma of being left off her rightful place on an episode of reality television ever again!" Then other friends of the girl's family show up en masse, having all been banned off the Bravo boards, to verify and add details of Mark's assiness. A few posts later, Mark's ex-wife shows up to give us details on how, exactly, Mark Faries deserves to get gonorrhea and die:



I am glad there is some dialog going on about this, as I am the mother of this guy's biological daughter. First, I want to say, that he has always been a good liar. My friends who have posted on here know this about him. He has also always been selfish. The only person he truly has affection for is himself. If he needed a reason to want to change in order to be on the show, he would fake whatever he had to, just to get "stuff" out of it. I am sure his wife put him up to doing it for Karly, so she could get an 18th birthday party and computer, etc. for college. Meanwhile, he purposely left his own daughter out of it. A caring father would have included her, had a dual party, since her 18th birthday was a few weeks after Karly's and maybe gotten her something out of it for college too. His real daughter has been accepted into the Honors Program at a good school, and we are struggling to come up with the money for it. She doesn't have any of the things she needs for her dorm room, and he refuses to help in any way. Karly has a good father who is paying for her tuition by himself. In fact, Mullet Man Mark's wife told my daughter that since Karly's father did it all alone and didn't make her submit anything about her finances, I should do it all alone and not ask Mark to report his income to the school. My daughter asked him anyway, because we can't afford to do it alone, and he refused to contribute a cent. He has never wanted to part with his money, even when we were married and she needed diapers as a baby. He always payed his small weekly amount in child support, but there are other ways to be a deadbeat dad, and a lousy person. My daughter really was very upset by what she saw, she knows the true family dynamic in that household, up till now she visited regularly. Now, I will be surprised if she ever speaks to him again. But she has been cheated by him all of her life, this was just the final blow.

We honestly had no idea what to do about this thread, y'all. It's so obvious that these people got banned by BRAVO and decided to use our forums as a medium for getting the word out, but they weren't doing anything *wrong,* per se. Finally we decided to just leave it there because "It makes me wrinkle my nose in disdain" isn't a valid reason for deleting a post, but maybe we did the wrong thing, because now everyone's sharing their own personal Bad!Parent stories and... ack.

I feel for these people, really, I do, but it's like, I just watch because Kyan and Thom are pretty and give good grooming and design advice, you know? Sigh.