“These are issues that need to be talked about.”
In his early teens, Van Ness was sexually abused. “For a lot of people who are survivors of sexual assault at a young age, we have a lot of compounded trauma,” he said. High school wasn’t easy for him. “I was too fat, too femme, too loud and too unlovable,” he added. He started spending hours a day in AOL chat rooms with older men, even meeting up with them for sex.
The next decade or so, he struggled with an addiction to hard drugs, sex, and even food. At 25-years-old, when he was working as a hairdresser, he started experiencing flu-like symptoms, including fainting. One day he walked into Planned Parenthood where he tested positive to H.I.V. “That day was just as devastating as you would think it would be,” he writes in the new memoir out September 24.
Shortly after he quit hard drugs and moved to Los Angeles, his career in entertainment took off when hispremiered in 2013. Now healthy, he hopes to blast misconceptions about being H.I.V. positive, describing himself as an out-and-proud “member of the beautiful H.I.V.-positive community.”Queer Eye came out, it was really difficult because I was like, ‘Do I want to talk about my status?,” he said. “And then I was like, ‘The Trump administration has done everything they can do to have the stigmatization of the L.G.B.T. community thrive around me.’” Because of this, he said, “I do feel the need to talk about this.”
He offers up another reason why he hasn’t spoken up about his past on the show, and we get it. “These are all difficult subjects to talk about on a makeover show about hair and makeup,” he said. “That doesn’t meanThe public response to this new interview has been so supportive. He is an inspiration to so many of us, regardless of gender, sexual identity, or experience with H.I.V.
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