Todrick Hall is no stranger to being brave and proud. After coming out as gay following his appearance on American Idol in 2010, the YouTube sensation and Kinky Boots Broadway star chronicled his experiences in his breakthrough visual album/musical, Straight Outta Oz. Now, Todrick is using his bold attitude and voice to educate young, Black gay and bisexual men about HIV.
“I’ve built this big audience of people who I’m able to reach out to and talk to them, perform for them, show them my new music, make them laugh, entertain them, but also talk to them about important causes,” Todrick told BlackDoctor.org about using his platforms to educate others about HIV.
The illness hits close to home for the show-stopping artist. His first introduction to HIV happened when he was very young after a relative was diagnosed HIV positive. A very close dance teacher and several friends in the dance community were also positive, but it wasn’t until Todrick dated HIV positive partners that he understood just how ignorant he was about HIV.
Todrick admits he was a very close-minded person when it came to HIV, falsely believing that it was contagious or that simply dating someone with the virus was an automatic death wish.
“It was something very scary for me in the beginning,” he recalled. “I had to learn the statistics and find pamphlets and stuff and get as much information as I could because when you love someone it wasn’t worth it for me to not explore that relationship just because I was afraid of the virus.” Having open and honest conversations about HIV not only helped him learn how to keep himself safe and his partners healthy, but also helped him to see just how ignorant his mindset was.
“I’m really, really glad that I’ve come out of that a stronger, wiser person, and I’m glad that now I can use my experience and my voice to help other people,” he said.
Todrick recently teamed up with Positively Fearless, a movement that aims to educate and empower Black and Hispanic gay and bisexual men to be “positively fearless” in taking charge of their health. This means getting tested for HIV and knowing their status. If there’s an HIV positive diagnosis, this also means accepting their diagnosis, seeking care and staying in treatment.
Black gay and bisexual men, according to a CDC report released this year, are one of the only groups for whom HIV diagnoses are continuing to increase. If the current rate continues, 1 in 2 gay or bisexual Black men will be diagnosed in their lifetime.
For many Black gay and bisexual men, however, the reality is that caring for their sexual health is also challenged by stigma in the Black community around homosexuality. For Todrick, who grew up in a small town in Texas inside of a family who was very much into sports and athletics, the stigma showed up early in his life being ridiculed as a young boy loving ballet. He recalls being embarrassed to tell people about the things he was doing and was nervous to go into barbershops or anywhere a lot of Black men gathered.
“They were the people that would always ridicule me for everything about the way I talk, the way I dress, the way I wanted to dance, the fact that I didn’t have a girlfriend, my responses to their questions weren’t masculine enough, I was too sensitive. All of those things made me feel very, very uncomfortable and not in a safe place,” Todrick explained.
He added, “I think a lot of people share that story and I think in some ways even just those little things when you’re a kid at a barbershop then translates to people not feeling comfortable enough to open up about their sexuality, about their status. They don’t want to go and get tested because sometimes it feels like it’s an admission that they are gay or all these things that they were bullied for from when they were children.”
Through his work with Positively Fearless, Todrick wants to show the importance of everybody playing their part in creating safe spaces for people – particularly Black, gay men – to be proud of who they are and to get tested to learn their HIV status. “It’s not a safe decision to not know your status,” the artist said and his advice to other Black, gay men is to take every action to make sure they are living a healthy life.
For the allies, they can help by supporting their friends and family in getting tested and holding them accountable to taking their medication.
“We’re all in this community together and it takes every single person in the community to make it the best that it can be.”