Yours In The Struggle: March 2011

When I Fell In Love With Elizabeth Taylor

More Musings From Paul

Yesterday was a very sad day, we lost one of our heroes. I’ve met Elizabeth Taylor on several occasions, but I didn’t know her. So I’m going to leave the tributes to her friends and colleagues, I want to discuss her impact on the HIV/AIDS movement.

As I remembered Ms. Taylor to a friend (who was under 30), I was surprised that he had never seen her movies nor did he know much about her AIDS activism. To him, she was the lady who sold perfume during the holidays. He didn’t know that she stood up for us when few celebrities would even mention AIDS. He didn’t know that her activism took her around the world to fight for the rights of people with AIDS. He didn’t know that she became an AIDS activist, like many of us, because her friends were sick and dying.

One of my fondest memories of Ms. Taylor was at a briefing in Congress to authorization of the Ryan White Care Act. We were in a back room waiting for the hearing to begin, Ms. Taylor had her hair dresser, Jose Eber with her. He was frantically working on her hair, teasing and pulling, until her hair got bigger then a pumpkin. I recall thinking, “why was he doing all that teasing?” I would later learn...

For some reason (yea, sure), I was next to Ms. Taylor as the doors opened for the briefing. We were blinded by a sea of flashing cameras. Ping, ping, ping, ping, ping. And the screaming, “Ms. Taylor look this way”, “Hey Liz, smile for the camera” By the by, she hated being called Liz, when we were briefed about meeting her, we were told to call her Elizabeth or Ms Taylor.

As I turned to watch her reaction to all this craziness, she transformed from this small women whose hair was being tortured into the star and diva, Elizabeth Taylor. Over the years, Ms. Taylor was legendary for the ups and downs of her weight. When she walked into the hearing, everyone was judging her and she knew that we were all judging her. So Mr. Eber was frantically teasing her hair because the bigger her hair, the smaller her face.

At the hearing she talked about HIV/AIDS and the friends she had lost, suddenly she transformed again, from “star and diva” to an in your face AIDS activist. She was bold and courageous, she would not take no for an answer. Her weight didn’t matter, our judgments didn’t matter, the only thing that mattered was her passion as an AIDS activist fighting for her friends, fighting for healthcare, fighting for us. That was the moment I fell in love with Elizabeth Taylor.