If there is one song that best sums up activist and blogger Michelle Anderson's early life, it was Johnny Lee's Lookin' for Love.
Anderson said that she made many mistakes because she was "looking for love in all the wrong places" while speaking at Center on Halsted Dec. 6 as part of the Center's World AIDS Days observance. Most of those mistakes, though, are well in the past.
Anderson, who has been living with HIV for the past 15 years, was in 2011 crowned Miss Plus America, making her the first openly HIV-positive mainstream beauty pageant winner in history. Since winning her title, Anderson has been speaking out about both her story and the stigma from HIV infection that so many Americans must still contend with.
The win came after a long and difficult journey for Anderson. She grew up a troubled youth, having survived childhood sexual abuse, family difficulties and drug addiction. She entered into numerous bad relationships and had three children, all of whom were taken away by the courts at one point.
Then, in 1999, she found out that she was HIV-positive. "Back then it was a white gay men's disease," said Anderson. "We were told that Black folks didn't get that."
Anderson's mother told her, "If you hadn't done what you've done, you wouldn't have gotten it," upon hearing news of her daughter's infection.
She first revealed her status to strangers when she was in addiction rehabilitation. Shortly thereafter, one of the counselors noticed blood on one of the toilet seats, and tasked Anderson with cleaning it up, though the blood did not belong to her.
"It wasn't until 2006 that I decided to do something different," Anderson said, noting that was the year she quit drugs completely. "I started dealing with all those issues."
Among those were post-traumatic stress syndrome, depression and bipolar disorder. "I had to learn to love me," she added. "I had to learn everything there was to appreciate about me."
She began educating herself about HIV and being open about her diagnosis, realizing that each disclosure she made was an opportunity to educate others as well. Eventually she began competing in beauty pageants for plus-sized women, first in Texas, where she lives, then at the national level.
In 2011, her entry fee was paid anonymously; to this day, she does not know who her sponsor was, she said.
"That win was representing every HIV-positive person who was afraid to say they were HIV-positive," according to Anderson. "I learned to say, 'I am not that disease.'"
Anderson is now in college, studying to be a social worker and drug abuse counselor. Her children were eventually returned to her, and she long ago reconciled with her mother.
"My mother changed by herself," Anderson noted. "I stopped trying to change her … and now my mom is my number-one fan, and she's my hero."
Besides Anderson's talk, the Center hosted an HIV/AIDS information fair Dec. 6. Molly McAndrew of AIDS Foundation of Chicago also discussed current policy initiatives concerning HIV/AIDS; an information session about pre-exposure prophylxis ( PrEP ) was also held.
