Amiable as well as handsome, Kyan Douglas belies the stereotype of a gay man who does hair for a living. C’mon, you remember—way back, in a not-so-distant day, when an iconic image of an outrageous, extremely outré flamer with bright hair (any color but his own, you understand), flouting flamboyant gestures and a lispy, feminized voice that was both foul- as well as tart-mouthed, was considered the norm for gay male hair-burners; it was what most of mainstream America thought those people looked and acted like.

That stereotype was never accurate. And, for sure, Mr. Douglas, one of the Fab Five who make up the Bravo hit show, Queer Eye For The Straight Guy, is anything but that. When A&U met him at a fundraiser for AIDS Services Center, Orange County, in California last February, at the extraordinary St. Regis Hotel/Monarch Bay Resort in tony Dana Point, he was quietly sitting in the audience as one of the acknowledged celebrities at the star-studded event, being polite but taking in the sights more than being one of them.

It was refreshing  to meet and interview this man who exhibits no “star” ’tude, no boring self-aggrandizement, let alone a desperate need to be the center of the world. Instead, one sees in person almost exactly what one views on the tube: a tall, good-looking, gentle fellow with exquisite hair perfectly in place. “It’s assumed,” says the almost-thirty-four-year-old (May 5, 1970, for those who do astrological charts), “that as a bunch we five are totally superficial, but it’s not true for the others and definitely not true for me.”

This latter assumption (fun but superficial) is something that Douglas has been quietly grappling with since the show hit big last summer. Queer Eye For the Straight Guy, for the uninitiated, is a perfect theatrical conceit: Take a stylistically clueless heterosexual male and make him more intriguing to women thanks to a total makeover in clothes, hair, skin, culinary arts, and decorating all in a general “lifestyle” approach through the eyes of five talented queers. This, admittedly, does at first lend itself to the charges of superficiality: Why should homosexuals immediately judge heterosexuals on their external elements when it is the internal fundamentals that we all agree should count the most?

So, yes, while absolutely true in theory—judge not lest ye be judged—the realities of getting laid and/or finding a soul mate often surround the externals and win out. So there. But our attractive Kyan Douglas, while acknowledging the subtle distinctions between lookin’ good and acting good, knows that a fine hair product can produce as strong an end result as a fine attitude about life.

“The externals are important but I’m not interested in superficiality. Queer Eye is a makeover show, meant to help our straight brethren. That said, we don’t approach these improvements as only a surface aesthetic. The producers and we think that these men are helped with their inner needs when they pay attention to their externals. What we Five do is not just slap a haircut or clothes or exterior style on them. We want what works for them—the rock-n-roll of their lives.”

To that end, the producers look for right-brained, nine-to-five hets (usually supplied by wives and girlfriends) who would like to be more left-brained—that is, to enhance their ability to tap into creativity. “It’s definitely there—this impulse to be creative—and we’re trying to help the man on his journey to become who he was meant to be.” Quite clearly, the first priority of the hour-long weekly reality documentary is to be light and fun and entertaining. “I have to say that I find it inherently beautiful when a straight guy and a gay guy learn from each other [and] while it doesn’t have to be deeply significant—we don’t need to spell it out, that’d be far too PC—something has to happen in this interchange. It’s certainly my goal to get along with these men. Leading by example, for instance. For myself, Queer Eye feeds more to my heart and my soul than as a platform for a career.”

While Douglas has remained HIV-negative, he has had experience with personal loss from HIV/AIDS. A spiritual “brother,” a friend who had a major influence on Kyan’s spiritual growth, Cliff Douglas (no relation), died almost a decade ago. And right now, one of his closest friends is living with the disease. But his acquaintance with illness and death began young, reflected in the losses, two years ago, of the grandmother who was the first person in his family he came out to as a gay man, and a grandfather he was close to, who died when Kyan was eleven. These are acceptable losses in the larger scheme of life, perhaps, but an uncle committed suicide when Kyan was thirteen—that’s tough on a kid. But the greatest loss was when three coworkers at a New Orleans restaurant were murdered during a mid-morning robbery, on Kyan’s day off. “The killers forced them into the cooler and shot them in the head. I could have been one of them. We were a family there and I had to identify the bodies right there in the cooler. That experience helped me to understand the value of life—its preciousness—and how you can’t take it for granted. It taught me to choose wisely with whom I surround myself, who I love and with whom I spend my time. And if I’m upset with [any] relationship, then it’s up to me to fix it.”

Coming of age during the great sexual plague in America, how did he, an active gay man, deal with it? How did HIV awareness impact on this kindly soul? He grows pensive, quietly thinking out his answer. “Not necessarily in a positive way, unfortunately. Some of my awareness as a homosexual person created a certain amount of shame around HIV, which I’m still dealing with. I’m [continuing to learn] that sex is not wrong and if I’m tempted with unsafe sexuality, that feeling is not to be ashamed of—it’s natural. There really is something raw about sexuality that’s real and good and we must continue to learn to not be ashamed of it. But…we have to honor the reality of practicing safer sex.”

For Douglas, any time shame and fear are used as safer-sex teaching tools, then an affirmative learning outcome is questionable. “I just don’t know that shame and fear need to be our teachers; rather, compassion, understanding, and love should be our guides. Look, condoms do not come from nature—but that doesn’t mean they’re wrong. There are risks out there, [one of them is] labeled H.I.V., that are simple cause-and-effect. We shouldn’t any of us be afraid of teaching protective measures to save lives.”

Queer Eye is a continuing success and has spawned—as TV successes often do—a cottage industry of accoutrements, including a superb book written by the five of them (Ted Allen, food; Thom Filicia, home decorating; Carson Kressley, dressing the part; and Jai Rodriguez, culture awareness, are the other members of the on-camera team). Subtitled “The Fab 5’s Guide to Looking, Cooking, Dressing, Behaving and Living Better,” it’s a true hands-on summation of what they individually do on the show. The same publisher will release Douglas’s book on women’s beauty and well-being, Beautified, this fall.

Douglas is just now dipping his toes into the pond of deeper relationships with a new possible partner. “For the first time in my life, I want the right to get married. I’ve met somebody who meets the criteria of what I’ve always imagined in and wanted from a partner—someone to marry and to bring children into the world with.” Stay tuned in for that possibility.

Douglas maintains a healthy, excess-free, New Age-y view of sexual and emotional security: “I’ve been trying to find a more holistic way for me to modify my [sexual] behavior. Drugs and alcohol can be so destructive. And if we’ve learned anything at all in twenty-plus years of this crisis, it’s that dread and humiliation of ‘forbidden love’ equate with excessive use of drugs and alcohol. Our sexual lives are maintained by the shadow side and the light side, so the more we can understand and embrace enlightenment, the less need there is for chemical enhancement.”

Many thanks to the production team—assistant: Richard Jopson; grooming: Timothy Fischetti; styling: Darshan Gress; hair: Emiliano Casarosa.

Clothing Credits for print edition:  Cover, Page 29: jacket: J Lindeberg, tie: Fake of London, shirt: Ben Sherman at Urban Outfitters, jeans: Diesel at Urban Outfitters, belt: Urban Outfitters; Inside: suit: Faconnable, T-shirt: Buckler, shoes: Urban Outfitters; Page 18, 21: T-shirt: Urban Outfitters, pants: Buckler, cuff: Urban Outfitters; Page 20: shirt: J Lindeberg, T-shirt: Urban Outfitters, pants: Levi at Urban Outfitters, belt: Urban Outfitters, shoes: Adidas at Urban Outfitters, watch: Diesel at Urban Outfitters

Dale Reynolds interviewed actor Christopher Showerman for the January issue.

April 2004