Queer Eye star Jonathan Van Ness has always been inspiring, but he started a new movement for change by sharing his positive HIV status with the world this past weekend in a candid interview with the New York Times.
"It’s hard for me to be as open as I want to be when there are certain things I haven’t shared publicly," he said. "These are issues that need to be talked about."
And Van Ness is talking about them! The non-binary reality TV star's book, Over the Top: A Raw Journey to Self-Love, came out today and he's teamed up with Planned Parenthood to tell the world his story—and that undetectable means untransmittable.
When he was diagnosed, Van Ness worked in a hair salon. After fainting while taking care of a client, he took an STI test at a nearby Planned Parenthood and found out he was HIV+.
Like many people who don't know any better, Van Ness thought his status was a death sentence.
"I’d been very fearful as a small child," he explained on the Today Show. "I was born in 1987 so growing up in the midst of the HIV/AIDS crisis and having two parents who were the age of seeing people [die]. We lost an entire generation of people."
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Then his doctor explained that with modern medicine, he could live a healthy lifestyle. Van Ness’s HIV was undetectable in his blood in just two weeks.
"Once I was undetectable, I was no longer at risk of infecting anyone," he says in the book, according to HIV Plus Magazine. "Once I found out I was positive, I never held back my HIV status from my sexual partners. No matter how clunky and no matter how many dates or sexual encounters it meant I wasn’t having."
"I take a pill every day now, and I see a doctor every three months, but other than that, I’ve done nothing but get cuter, realize my dreams, look better topless than I’ve ever looked before, and my new figure-skating curves? Don’t even get me started. Postdiagnosis, I’ve accomplished more than many HIV-negative people will ever have the chance to do."
Van Ness is destigmatizing living with HIV one day at a time, and we're so proud to see it!
