Lizzie Velásquez was 17 years old when she found a video on YouTube called ‘The Ugliest Woman in the World.’ It took her a few seconds to realize something devastating: the protagonist was her.
The clip already had more than four million views. She scrolled down to the comments looking for even a single voice defending her amid that multitude of insults, but found none. There were only messages telling her to burn herself, to take her own life, asking why her parents had wanted her. She cried through entire nights without telling anyone, not even her friends, in Texas.
Lizzie was born with Marfan syndrome and lipodystrophy, two rare diseases that prevent her from gaining weight. Today, at 26 years old, she weighs 27 kilos and is blind in one eye. But instead of hiding, she started her own YouTube channel. Today she has 240.000 subscribers and a TED Talk with more than seven million views, and she works alongside Tina Meier — the mother of a bullying victim — advocating for a law against bullying in the United States.