Pedro Zamora joins third season of MTV's The Real World

June 1994

MTV's third season of reality show The Real World (1994) opened with a charged group dialogue over cast member Pedro Zamora's AIDS status. This dialogue entered the living rooms of millions of viewers, and for many young adults this was the first "real" discussion they had ever encountered. Zamora's spotlight hardly diminished as the season continued, especially when the camera would follow him and his partner Sean Sasser on their romantic meetings -- a revolutionary and trailblazing move that depicted an HIV -- positive man and a man with AIDS as a couple. Zamora offered audiences the opportunity to meet a young Latino man living with AIDS -- an image unfamiliar to television audiences.

Additionally, Zamora actively worked as an HIV and AIDS educator breaking established stereotypes that living with AIDS is solely a death sentence. Through Zamora's actions and words, he not only educated his housemates but also the large viewing public. His commitment ceremony to Sasser ended the televised season, and Zamora's subsequent passing on Nov. 11, 1994 occurred at nearly the same time as the season came to an end on air. His presence on the show negated perceptions that AIDS is an all-consuming and thoroughly debilitating disease; but more importantly, it showed young people that yes, it can happen to them.

Zamora and Sasser helped usher in a new era of living openly with AIDS instead of in the shadows.(1) Following Zamora's death, Sasser continued to lobby Congress for much-needed AIDS research money and lecture on living with and preventing HIV. In addition to Sasser's educational campaign, fellow Real World cast member Judd Winick wrote Pedro and Me (2001), which won the GLAAD Media Award for Best Comic Book and the American Library Association Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender Roundtable Nonfiction Honor Book. Additionally, GLAAD also recognized Zamora posthumously as a Special Honoree and The Real World III: San Francisco as an Outstanding Documentary Series at the 1995 Media Awards.

References

1. Steele, Bruce C. "Pedro Zamora June 1994: MTV's The Real World introduces Pedro Zamora, a young gay man with aids and a boyfriend - Justifying our love." The Advocate. Nov 12, 2002.