Social media influencer Gena Tew has expressed her objection at being referred to as an "AIDS advocate," insisting that she is merely just sharing her own experience with the disease.
Tennessee-based Tew, 27, has been documenting her health journey in a series of social media posts since going public with her diagnosis in March.
In one TikTok clip, shared on June 11 and viewed over 14 million times, the model showed herself struggling to get up from her bed. Her weight had plummeted to 65 pounds, and muscle atrophy had weakened her legs, she revealed.
Her health has bounced back in recent months, she said, with her weight increasing to more than 100 pounds, but Tew continues to deal with other problems, including an inability to walk unaided and blindness in one of her eyes.
As she continued to document her journey, Tew also received messages from detractors, including one who responded to a video she posted on New Year's Eve, in which she said that she isn't a "sexually motivated person."
The person in question told Tew that "all you portray is sex being half naked all the time," signing out the message by calling her an "AIDS advocate."
"See, comments like this right here, I just want to address some things," said Tew as she responded to the comment in a TikTok video on Wednesday.
"This year, I want you guys to understand that I am not an AIDS advocate, as this person said," she continued. "I have said this in a video before: I just post my life. Like, it's a journal for me, and I'm going to continue to do that this year.
"But do not tell me what I need to do and who I need to be teaching and what should be my career path as an advocate, because I do not choose that. If I help people, I help people. If I don't, I don't. I'm living my life, and I don't want to be addressed as the AIDS girl and that's my life. No. I'm going to beat this. Get over it."
In November, Tew told her more than 840,000 TikTok followers that the CD4 count in her blood had been boosted as her health continues to improve. The count is a measure of the number of CD4 cells, a type of immune cell attacked by HIV.
In a video clip, she said: "I just had my recent bloodwork done, and as you know... my CD4 count was 112. So now it is 159. So I think in the next three-and-a-half to four months, I'll be over 200. I'm excited."
She continued: "As my doctor sees it, they say on paper they will see it as HIV instead of AIDS." Once her CD4 count surpasses 200, she will be classified as living with HIV rather than having AIDS, she explained. HIV typically turns into AIDS in approximately eight to 10 years if left untreated, according to the Mayo Clinic.
While Tew remains unable to walk unaided, she shared an update with her TikTok followers in September, showing herself briefly standing up with the aid of a walker.
As her health improved, Tew said in October that the viral load in her blood means that she cannot transmit HIV to another person.
"I am undetectable, you guys. That means untransmittable," she said in a TikTok video. "With that being said, people are asking me, 'Are you going to marry or have a baby with someone with AIDS?' I don't need to marry somebody with AIDS. They don't have to have AIDS. That means I cannot transmit it to the other person."
Tew went on to say that her potential partner could take precautions, such as going on a medicine called pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP), which reduces the chances of contracting HIV through sexual intercourse or while injecting drugs.
"I can have a normal life. Let's get rid of that stigma," she said in her video. "AIDS isn't a death sentence. I survived—I'm a survivor."
Thanks to antiretroviral therapy, HIV/AIDS patients can suppress the viral replication within the body and block transmission to others. The patient will subsequently have such a low level of HIV in the blood that it becomes undetectable in conventional analysis.
Uncommon Knowledge
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
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Ryan Smith is a Newsweek Senior Pop Culture and Entertainment Reporter based in London, U.K. His focus is reporting on ... Read more
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