When Zachary Willmore uploaded a new video to his TikTok account on February 24, the tone was more somber than his usual posts. The previous two videos of Wilmore, a 19-year-old freshman at San Diego State University, showed off his impressive ability to do repeated cartwheels in thigh-high stiletto boots. In one light-hearted Valentine’s Day post, he did a front flip down the hallway of his bedroom to hand a tissue to a fictional friend who had just been dumped by her boyfriend. “Bestie, don’t cry,” he pleaded, while a neighbor looked out to discern the source of the commotion.
But that day’s post was different: As he cautiously applied concealer to his face, alone in his bedroom, Willmore told his followers—about a million at the time—that he had just found out he had HIV. Wearing a salmon-colored sweatshirt from Destin, Florida, his emotions were raw and unfiltered as he processed the news that he feared would ruin his life. “I honestly feel so gross,” he says, his voice empty and distant. “I wish I could take a big needle and take all the blood out of my body. People keep telling me I’m going to get over this. Honestly, this feels like the end of the world to me. All I can think is that this disease is forever. I’ll never be able to get rid of it. I feel exhausted, emotionally and physically.
Willmore, now a 20-year-old sophomore, has uploaded more than two dozen videos to TikTok since February detailing his HIV acceptance process, many of which have gone viral. When he found out he was HIV positive, Willmore says the fear and apprehension captured in that first video illustrated how little he knew about the disease. He learned almost nothing about HIV in his sex education courses, he says, except that “it wasn’t something you wanted to get.” Everything he knew about the virus came from 1980s depictions in the media and popular culture—in the early days of the epidemic, when very little was known about HIV, including how to prevent transmission.
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“That’s the mentality people still have,” Willmore said. He noted that the perception of the virus, among some, has not changed since the New York Times first reported a “rare and often rapidly fatal form of cancer” detected among 41 gay male patients, a fifth of whom died at the time. year of being HIV positive. “That’s part of what creates the stigma around HIV today.”
More than 86 million people have been diagnosed with HIV since the Times article was published in July 1981, and more than 39 million people around the world are currently living with the virus. But upon meeting with a social worker after his own diagnosis, Willmore would soon learn that HIV was no longer the death sentence it was 42 years ago. As a result of dramatic advances in medication and treatment, HIV-positive people can now expect to live often as long as anyone else. In 2019, the oldest known HIV-positive person “died peacefully” in his sleep, at the age of 100. Additionally, compliance with daily antiretroviral therapy can reduce the presence of the virus in a person’s bloodstream to such a low level that HIV is not transmissible through sexual intercourse.
Willmore waited a week after his diagnosis to post a video about having HIV, he says, until he had his medication in hand. Now that he was better informed, Willmore wanted to show other people that they could still live happy, healthy lives after contracting HIV. “When I started making videos where I was like, ‘I’m actually pretty good. It’s not affecting my life as much as I first thought,’ the videos didn’t get as many views as when I was crying and thinking it was the end,” she says.
The response to Willmore’s video diaries, as he calls them, has been almost universally positive, aside from the occasional nasty tweet. His family has been incredibly supportive: Willmore says that when he told his brother about his condition, the reaction was refreshingly anticlimactic. “Ah, is that all?” his brother replied. “I thought you had cancer because of the way he talked to everyone.” Willmore’s father, an emergency room doctor, was one of the first people to help him destigmatize HIV; After Willmore told her over the phone that he had tested positive, his father calmly explained the realities of daily treatment and medication. Willmore’s parents frequently appear in his videos.
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What Willmore hoped to achieve by sharing his story with the public was to help put a face to the problem and demystify HIV for others who might find themselves in the same place he was in nine months ago. Very few public figures have spoken openly about his HIV status, and despite 1.2 million Americans currently living with the virus, many people have no one in their life who can answer their questions. So Willmore’s videos sometimes respond to the misconceptions and prejudices he occasionally experiences, such as men on dating apps telling him they’re not interested in dating someone who is HIV-positive. He posted a video after a guy on Hinge told him he was “damaged goods,” which he believes reinforces the false idea that people with HIV are “dirty” and “unlovable.”
“When you have a platform, it’s important to use it to do good in the world,” he says. “It’s important to come out. It helps a lot of people to see someone – even someone in the public eye – face who they are. People don’t talk about it because it’s taboo.”
Willmore also knows that he is privileged to be able to talk openly about his HIV status and have access to medication that helps him lead his life as before. Although global data from the World Health Organization reports that 76% of all people living with HIV in 2022 were taking antiretrovirals to help control the virus, many still do not have access to the medication. And although US federal law prohibits discrimination against people with HIV, transmission is still criminalized in 35 states.
But what he’s most happy about about the response to his videos is that, over time, people have forgotten that Willmore has HIV. He now posts about HIV less and less frequently, as he resumes his usual interests: looking fabulous and wearing a lot of pink. In a recent post, Willmore channels his inner ice princess with a montage of furry winter coats, kicking a chunky heel into the air as he poses for the camera. On the occasions when he talks about living with the virus, he says his followers – who now exceed 1.8 million on TikTok – often respond that they forgot that he has HIV. That was the goal from the beginning, he says: for others to see that, for many people, HIV doesn’t have to be a big problem.
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When he posted that first video, Willmore says he was very concerned that having HIV would be the only thing he would be remembered for, not for making history as Missouri’s first male king or for the countless accomplishments he hopes to have in the future. Although he jokes that he wants to be a “trophy husband,” Willmore says his aspiration is to make his mark in the fashion world. He is very glad that his initial fears have been proven wrong and that he can still have the life he chooses for himself.
“I hope to look back one day and realize how much I’ve grown,” he says. “I want to be able to tell my past self that everything is okay and we made it. We were able to move forward. I want to look back and say, ‘This didn’t define you.'”
2023-12-04 08:52:09
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