Bangkok--20 Nov--
Global Ambassador for HIV/AIDS Awareness Nicholas Snow to Make Major Fashion Statement at Bangkok International Fashion Week
Launching the "Get Tested, Live Longer" HIV/AIDS Awareness Campaign
New public awareness campaign proclaims, "The absolute latest fashion is to know your HIV status." In his role as a credentialed journalist covering Bangkok International Fashion Week as he does twice yearly, NotesFromThailand.com publisher Nicholas Snow is making a major fashion statement from the grandstands and between catwalk shows, mingling with people who have known him or of him for years, with the debut of his new t-shirt design marking the launch of the "Get Tested, Live Longer" HIV/AIDS Awareness Campaign. Beginning with the first day of BIFW (Nov. 20, 2008) Snow is wearing his design on a black T-shirt as seen in the attached images.
Snow believes it is particularly poignant to launch the "Get Tested, Live Longer" campaign at one of Asia's leading fashion events presented by an industry chocked full of gay and bisexual men, as well as the men and women who love them. Collectively, the industry has a powerful influence on culture as a whole, so the ripple effect of such a statement could be enormous. In addition, Snow's project has been inspired by the Thai fashion industry, in particular by a recent t-shirt the local fashion guild designed to promote safer sex. Snow is coming out as an HIV positive person in the midst of this crowd to be of service to all of them.
The graphic message begins with "You now know you know someone who is HIV Positive." Snow is making such a dramatic statement because of the invisibility of openly-HIV positive people in Asia and the need for people to know that they know people who are, in fact, HIV positive. This serves the two-fold purpose of getting people to take HIV seriously enough to learn their HIV status, and to challenge the social and cultural stigmas facing people living with HIV/AIDS. Unfortunately, the majority of people in Asia who are HIV positive first learn of their status when they become ill. A person who learns their HIV positive status early after infection has the ability to then monitor with their healthcare providers CD-4 (T-cells) and viral load counts so they may begin a regime of medications when indicated (to keep them healthy!), thereby dramatically increasing their chances of living a much longer, much healthier life.
Snow also believes that anyone concerned enough about their HIV status and seek out a test and who subsequently learns they are in fact HIV negative, can be educated and counseled as part of the process of empowering them to remain HIV negative. After decades of adhering to safer sex practices, Snow became HIV positive in August of 2007 because he failed to use a condom, not for good reasons, but for "human reasons" he says, including the fact that he was depressed and seeking comfort in sex; was with a partner who stated and believed he was HIV negative; had a false sense of security about remaining negative since he had been negative for so long as a sexually active adult; and finally, was unaware that the rate of HIV infection among men who have sex with men in Bangkok exceeds 30%.
The "Get Tested, Live Longer" campaign is now also a part of Snow's NotesFromTheWorld.com family of web sites, allowing him to extend the campaign with the approximate 1.8 million page views his sites get each year. In addition, Snow's YouTube channel receives between 400 and 500 views a day on average, and he is extending the campaign to his YouTube audience using their new pop-up bubble-text feature. The campaign messages will be put in place on all Snow's YouTube videos over the coming weeks (www.YouTube.com/NicholasSnow, www.YouTube.com/ActionEqualsLife).
Even if no other media outlets or organizations jump on the campaign bandwagon or report his activities, Snow will reach tens of thousands of people every month with his existing media platform. The campaign directs people to ActionEqualsLife.com.
In a previous interview with Sylvia Tan, editor of Fridae.com, Snow explained, "It is my hope that ActionEqualsLife.com will bring people from all walks of life together who share the common goals of creating HIV/AIDS Awareness; supporting the worldwide fight for equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered people; and supporting human rights in general. I specifically hope that any official group, NGO, etc. will create a presence at the site and use it as an extension of their outreach, and that people from all walks of life will interact to share their experience, strength and hope about these issues. If we meet friends and lovers along the way, fabulous! Most importantly, I want people to go the web site right now and input information about anonymous, confidential, affordable HIV testing opportunities that exist in their communities."
At ActionEqualsLife.com, Snow has also created a Speaker's Bureau of HIV Positive People so that anyone anywhere who is HIV positive and willing to share their story with the public, the media, and their community, may register and make themselves known. Snow is quick to acknowledge that it is not easy for one to be public about being HIV positive, and maintains his respect for anyone who chooses not to disclose their status (In many parts of the world anyone coming out publicly as being HIV positive could face dire circumstances). However, he also looks forward to the speaker's bureau having more than one member, himself.
While some people believe Snow's t-shirt will create a buzz at BIFW, Snow himself is more interested with the messages he can communicate on the sky train, subway, in restaurants and clubs, and so forth, by simply wearing the t-shirt in his every day life (when t-shirts are appropriate wardrobe for the occasion), which he will do on most days from this point on. Snow became one of the most visible openly-HIV positive people in Asia in early October with the launch of ActionEqualsLife.com and a coordinated outreach to media including a press conference at the Foreign Correspondents Club of Thailand.
Some people have accused Snow of exploiting his HIV for his own fame, but he maintains that while he has the desire to reach millions of people as a self-appointed Ambassador for HIV/AIDS Awareness, he felt compelled to tell his story to the hundreds of thousands of people he already reaches every year as a media personality. One of his goals has been to reach those consumers of media he already appears in, and he has accomplished this goal on numerous occasions.
Snow's story has been reported in Spice! Magazine, Prestige Magazine, The Bangkok Post, the Nation, at Fridae.com, on all of his own web sites, and on the internationally syndicated TV show Morning Talk. The campaign is set to be referenced as part of Snow's contributing writer biography in 2 Magazine, and in the November issue of Prestige Magazine, Snow is included on the celebrity spotlight page along with Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie and Helen Mirren.
Concerned whether or not coming out HIV positive would adversely affect his ability to earn a living, unrelated to his announcement, Snow has since received additional freelance writing assignments, has been cast in his largest motion picture acting role to date, and his commercial web sites (covering the world of travel and entertainment) continue to grow. Snow also continues to present on occasion for Capital TV, the producers of Destination Thailand, Pattaya Plus, and Phuket Plus.
Snow was reminded recently that in the last year he was so depressed that he researched on the internet painless ways to end his own life. Instead, he has chosen to live large and make every moment count. While the criticism of his self-promotional ways does hurt at times, Snow feels blessed that he has a unique set of circumstances that allow him to carry his message to a broad international audience, to the community in which he lives, to the hundreds of people who email him, and now, to anyone who he randomly encounters while making his own bold fashion statement.
For further media enquiries kindly contact
Karin Lohitnavy Frick at [email protected] or 086-0442145 OR Kittima Sethi at [email protected] or 081-8262399.
For the online version of this story which also includes a video and multiple photo galleries, visit www.ActionEqualsLife.com