There is a clear highlight to season 3 of Netflix's Queer Eye reboot - and it comes in the form of a lesbian waiter from Kansas City, Jess Guilbeaux.
It's the first time the 'Fab Five' (Antoni Porowski, Tan France, Karamo Brown, Bobby Berk, and Jonathan Van Ness) have featured a lesbian 'hero' - the name they give to the subjects of their famous makeovers.
“I had pretty much given up on kind, genuine people,” Jess tells the Fab Five in her episode, titled 'Black Girl Magic'.
Opening up about the struggles she faced coming out at the age of 16, Jess admitted that she'd found it hard to find a sense of belonging in the LGBTIQ+ community.
“They expected me to be someone else,” she says. “More black, less white, more gay, less gay. I feel like I don’t belong.”
“First of all, what they do is they instill a level of confidence, and then they challenge you to push yourself outside of that,” Guilbeaux explained.
She added: “That in itself sticks with you every day.”
Now the young woman is hoping to pass on her newfound confidence to others in a similar situation - and, judging by the response on social media, it's already happening.
Guilbeaux said she was overwhelmed by the response, saying that she'd been contacted by many viewers who resonated with her story.
“They saw me on TV, and they felt like, ‘This is someone I can confide in,'" she said.
“And that’s the whole reason why I did it. I just didn’t want anyone who was in my situation to feel alone.”
