Lizzie Velasquez became an Internet sensation of sorts in 2013 when she gave a TEDX talk in Texas called ‘How Do You Define Yourself.’ Here was a woman in her 20s, suffering from neonatal progeroid, a disorder that made it impossible for her to gain weight. She has zero per cent body fat and has never weighed more than 29 kilos.
Her TEDX talk concentrated on the cyber bullying that she went through. She was called ‘the world’s ugliest woman’ but that tag was what made her turn her life around. She stumbled upon a video calling her ‘the world’s ugliest woman’ when she was 17. “I had no idea when I opened that video that it would make all the confidence I had go back down to nonexistent – to dirt.” From “Just go get a gun, put it to your head and take yourself out of the world. It will be a much better place” to “Put a bag over your head, because when people see your face they’re going to go blind,” the comments left Lizzie heartbroken.
Lizzie Velasquez’s TEDX talk
“Maybe I should take myself out of this world,” she remembered thinking. “If so many people are saying it, then maybe they’re right. But there was a little voice in the back of my head that kept telling me not to listen. My parents said we have to learn to forgive them because we don’t know what’s going on in their lives.”In a recent interview with The Huffington Post, she shared that her parents have always remained her biggest support. As a child when she was teased or called hurtful things she remembers asking her parents what was wrong with her. “When I asked my parents what was wrong with me, they said, there’s nothing wrong with you. The only difference is that you’re smaller than the other kids. They told me, we are going to love you and support you and help you reach every dream you have,” she shares.
While her parents refused to treat her in a special manner, growing up was a task for Lizzie. She remembers people stopping mid-conversation to stare at her. She refused to go to water parks because she just couldn’t bear with the thought of getting into a bathing suit in public.
“There were many times where I was so frustrated and angry,” she shared at the ESPN W: Women + Sports Summit in California. “I didn’t know who to blame or who to get angry at. I made every birthday wish, I lit every candle at church and did every prayer before bed. I said ‘God, please take this all away from me. Please make me normal.'”
Lizzie credits the positive influence in her life through college to her parents and two younger siblings. “The five of us are very close. We’re a team. And together this team helped me start to realise that we really do have two options in life. We can either decide to feel sorry for ourselves and throw the biggest pity party in the world and just be stuck in it – or there’s this whole other side with everything that we do have in our lives,” she shared at the summit.
Trailer of ‘A Brave Heart: Lizzie Velasquez Story’ a documentary
“Over time I learned that the only way I could show those people that they weren’t going to become my definition and my truth was to somehow make myself better,” she said to the audience. During her college years, Lizzie concentrated on anti-bulling campaigns. Last year, she travelled to Washington, D.C. to bring an anti-bullying campaign to Congress. She has also written three books about her life and a documentary, ‘A Brave Heart: The Lizzie Velasquez Story,” comes out late this year.
A true story of inspiration, Lizzie took the negative YouTube video and turned her life around. “For so long I felt like I was alone in this world. But now I know that it’s okay to go through that struggle. It’s okay to be vulnerable. It’s okay to be weak. You have to allow yourself to have those times. I guarantee that you as soon as you do, you are going to be ten times more eager to make yourself better,” she signed off at the Summit.
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