Television doesn't often get HIV right but on a recent episode of Secret Lives of Americans, it did. Completely self-shot by its subjects, Secret Lives of Americans tries to offer viewers a chance to see both how damaging it can be to hold on to a secret and also how often in revealing our secrets we learn that we're all not that much different from each other. Since Pivot's audience is young (its owner, Participant Media, aims for serving passionate Millennials ages 18 to 34), an episode on a young black man with HIV is all that more relevant and because of the structure of the series — the format provides a sort of unfiltered look at the first steps and the aftermath of exposing these powerful truths to friends, family, peers, and lovers — there's an unexploited, real feel to it.
On the June 26th episode, we met Kenny, a fashion consultant living and working in Los Angeles. For two years, Kenny has known he is HIV-positive but he's just now getting ready to tell his close friends in L.A. and his family back home. But don't expect the usual hand-wringing, shame-filled confessions we've seen before. Kenny's first priority is to spread positivity. He tells his counselor at AIDS Project L.A., "If I had known I could have experienced this earlier, I would have been more open to it."
Watch the exclusive clip below:
