- Please welcome someone
that I really consider to be a phenomenal human being.
I'm getting to know him a little bit,
and I'm falling deeper in love every single minute.
Please welcome the wonderful, unique, kind, brilliant,
funny and totally inspiring, Jonathan Van Ness.
(audience applauds and cheers) (bright theme music)
- I'm so happy to see you! (audience applauds)
You look beautiful.
Your hair looks amazing.
(audience applauds and screams raucously)
- Did you see the products I put on?
It's changing my life.
I'm gonna keep doing them,
it's the best product in the world.
- The shine on your hair looks amazing too.
- Jonathan and I are talking about,
I just posted another video about your product
that has truly changed my life.
And I just am out there on mountaintops
and roaring about it everywhere.
- Drew, can I just say that, so not to name drop
right at the very beginning of our interview,
- Let's do it. - But when I became friends
with Michelle Kwan- - Ha!
(audience laughs) - It took me-
It took me two full years to not be starstruck
even as we were friends.
So even though we're getting to know each other,
even though I've gotten to see you in real life,
several times and we're like,
when I saw that video,
this is off script everyone, like, we're, it literally,
I'm actually getting like emotion (babbles excitedly)
I can't...
I just have loved you for such a long time,
and to see my products that I've just worked on for so long,
and to see you use it,
(audience coos) I just, it really, yeah.
I actually have a tear.
I don't know if it's the sleep deprivation
from being on book tour, (audience laughs)
or if it's, no, but it is just,
it really meant so much to me.
And thank you for lifting up people so much.
It means so much.
(audience applauds and cheers)
- [Drew] Thank you.
- Really so much.
- Thank you for saying that.
(audience applauds)
Alright.
I've been reading this book, it's so beautiful.
So what is your advice for people actively dating?
- I think that what is so important for dating
and whether you're in a relationship or not,
I feel like it's our relationship with ourself
is what is so important,
because even if you are looking to be
in a relationship with someone,
we always are going to come back
to our relationships with ourselves.
In yoga this one time we learned,
that we all have this invisible magnet that's inside of us,
it's either positively or negatively charged, you know?
And I think that when you're working on yourself
it's going to charge that magnet in such a way
that the person that you're meant to be with
is gonna vibe towards you anyway,
so you really can't lose by investing in yourself,
and in your relationship with yourself anyway.
- Okay, this is why I asked you this question.
(audience applauds)
Okay.
Body image.
I really love the body image chapter.
What's a good way to,
again, kind of speak to ourselves,
or get comfortable in ourselves?
- Yeah. - For who we are
and how we are?
- Yeah.
So in my essay about learning to accept my beautiful body,
I'm thinking a lot about the term "body neutrality".
And I think that for so long,
our value doesn't need to come from our bodies, period.
We are so worth being loved and celebrated and being,
and having our humanity,
what's that word?
Validated.
We're are allowed to have our humanity validated,
not based on how we look,
but just because we are here,
because we are human.
It's not an external thing.
And then the other thing I think about,
and I talk about in this book,
and I talked about in my last book a little bit,
is this idea of it's like parts therapy.
We are parts.
We all have this multitude of parts of our personalities.
And when there's a part of ourself
that's really, really fixated,
or bothered by, or worried about this way that we look,
it's okay for you to be in relationship with yourself,
with that part and be like...
You know, and I actually did this in this chapter.
It's like, what's going on?
For me, it all boiled down to this Bowflex commercial.
Ugh, these Bowflex commercials, when I was five, honey.
And I was like, "Mom, when am I gonna have my abdominals?
When am I gonna look like that?"
I remember being five.
So such a little kid,
seeing all of these messages that we see in the media,
that makes you feel like you're meant to look a certain way
or be a certain way.
And so that's a lot to unlearn.
'Cause when we're all just like kids out in the world,
we're learning, there's so much to see.
And then all of a sudden, you've become an adult
and you're like, "Why am I, why don't I like this?"
You know, and also why do I have to be brave
for liking how I look?
Why can't we celebrate how we are?
That's why I think body positivity
and the emphasis that we put on people
who we deem to be body positive.
We are all worth celebrating, no matter how you look.
And so I think we gotta decouple that.
(audience applauds)
(Jonathan chuckles) - [Drew] So good.
(bright theme music)