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N A H T A N JO VAN NESS TOMORROW ? In a myth-shattering memoir, Queer Eye’s hair care wizard talks sex, drugs and sudden celebrity. Think you know this bubblicious boy in the beard from TV? We’re serving you JVN realness. BY KEVIN PHINNEY
buoyant, witty and composed. But in a new memoir, “Over the Top: A Raw Journey to Self-Love “(HarperOne, $27.99), the Queer Eye grooming guru lets his hair down so fans can see beyond what the Netflix cameras capture. “That’s such a misperception of me and just life in general,” says the star. “I don’t exist in a perpetually effervescent state. I am not that person all the time. And that’s literally the basis of my book, which is: If you knew everything I’ve been through, if you saw me when I was irritated, if you saw me when I was late, if you saw me when I was frustrated, would you still love me? Would you still understand me? Would you still want to take the picture with me?” Labeled ‘the outrageous one’ of Queer Eye’s next gen Fab Five, Van Ness is breathing in the thrill of exploding expectations. He’s put his entire life on display — including bouts with addiction, childhood sexual abuse and his status as HIV-positive. And now he’s doing his level best, with no apparent skeletons left in the closet, to simply enjoy being Jonathan again.
JUST ADD JONATHAN As his memoir makes clear, Van Ness’ path into the limelight has been anything but straight. He writes that from a very early age,“identifying male and female in the same day is something that has always been possible for me.” (Van Ness identifies as non-binary but presently opts for he/him/his pronouns.) But don’t ask him to pretend being anything other than himself. “I can’t even do a straight accent – it’s not in my repertoire.”* With the book already on the shelves and a special series of Queer Eye: We’re in Japan! currently streaming, Van Ness is in London when we connect. He can be sweet as pie — and that’s just the problem. He wants the world to know there’s more, and that he simply can’t manage the time or the emotional bandwidth to be the Instant Party everyone expects all the time. “Life is effervescent,” he maintains.“But it’s also tragedy. It is happy, it’s sad, it’s tough, it’s with ease. It is a whole spectrum of emotions that are high highs and low lows. And we all can really inhabit any of those things at any of those places. And none of that means that you aren’t truly a happy person, or that you’re not truly feeling sad right now. I think it’s that life is a constant choice of, no matter what cards we’re given, it’s like, ‘How am I going to handle these?’”
GROWING UP JVN The cards that Van Ness were dealt found him growing up in Quincy, Illinois. There, he obsessed over female Olympians’ routines and demonstrated early brand loyalty towards sugary treats (cinnamon and brown sugar Pop-Tarts; Cinnamon Toast Crunch). He also tried to get used to being bullied by everyone he encountered beyond his front yard. His family has social standing in the community. (JVN suggests they’re a less-luxe, more-local version of the Kennedys.) They’re part owners of Quincy Media, which
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WILL YOU S TILL
ON A FLATSCREEN, JONATHAN VAN NESS OFTEN PRESENTS AS
