Jonathan Van Ness on Finding Light in Darkness & Cutting Your Own Bangs

In the minutes before Jonathan Van Ness appears on my laptop, my entire family is in a frenzy. Queer Eye’s very own JVN in our kitchen? My mom is ecstatic. She runs around the house picking up dog toys and clearing dishes out of the way, panicked that if the house isn’t spotless, we’ll somehow end up as the subjects of the next episode (although in hindsight, that would be awesome).

When Jonathan finally appears on the screen, I freeze. He’s perched in a wooden chair, one leg crossed gracefully over the other, his black skirt sparkling ever so slightly in the sun. For a moment, as he greets the invisible crowd of virtual attendees, it seems like he’s speaking directly to me. It takes a minute to convince myself that this isn’t a personal Zoom call, but as the event begins, it really does feel like I’m listening to an old friend.

If there was one person in the world who could make something like quarantine seem positive with a flip of his hair and a sulfate-free shampoo, it would be Jonathan. But through the screen, he admits that, despite the energetic positivity he’s so well known for, he wants to get back to “normal” just as badly as the rest of us do.

“I miss being onstage— I want to do gymnastics onstage, I want to do a show, I want to come to interviews honey, I want to see you all in real life!” he laments. But the first thing he’s looking forward to after social distancing is up?

“A turquoise beach would be nice.”

Distant dreams of post-quarantine life aside, the conversation turns to one of self-care, with Jonathan emphasizing movement and meditation as his go-to coping mechanisms in tough times. With so many college students back home with their families or stuck in college towns, Jonathan knows that a lot of young people have had some of their freedom stripped away. As a way of maintaining your own identity whilst in your parents’ house, he suggests pursuing your fantasy and doing something that makes you excited every single day.

When Jonathan was bored and looking for ways to express himself as a kid, he remembers spending time on trampolines, listening to his favorite records, and playing tennis up against his garage door for hours on his own.

“You’re the only child?” moderator and comedian Michelle Buteau asks sympathetically in response to his story.

“No…” Jonathan responds sheepishly. “But they were straight and obsessed with baseball.”

Of course, if your quarantine self-care looks more like scrolling through TikTok and impulse buying boxes of hair dye, we’re not judging. But there are a few things JVN wants you to know before your boredom escalates to the point of cutting your own bangs:

JVN’s Tips for DIY Quarantine Bangs

Start by creating a small triangle section of hair right in the center of your face, where your bangs will be.
Never take hair from the sides of your face or anywhere beyond that triangle section (no, it will not give you piecey layers).
Hold the triangle section down on your face, not away from it.
Cut upwards instead of directly across to avoid blunt lines.
For more fringe, take the original triangle section you’ve just cut and make it slightly deeper, cutting upwards to help blend everything together.

Call it self-expression or just a desperate attempt to feel something in quarantine, but this is the way to do bangs RIGHT.

Luckily for us, JVN’s wisdom expands even beyond DIY bang-cutting. Towards the end of the call, he gets more serious, speaking with just as much energy and confidence, but with an honesty that goes beyond his TV persona. “I do feel really positive a lot of times, but there’s also a darkness,” he admits.

It happens to everyone, especially in stressful times like these where nothing is really certain. To get through it, Jonathan says it’s important to embrace some of those feelings and give yourself the chance to process them, instead of shutting down and letting them spiral out of control.

“You can feel the dark stuff and then move back into the positive stuff,” he promises. And in that moment, with Jonathan Van Ness in my kitchen, every bit as fabulous as I expected he would be in person, I believe him.