Lizzie Velásquez was 17 when she clicked, out of simple curiosity, on an 8-second YouTube video.
It had around 4 million views and was titled “The Ugliest Woman in the World”. The woman in the images was her. What brought her down the most were the thousands of hateful comments: “It wasn’t until I started reading them that I really hit rock bottom”. She cried night after night.
She was born in Austin, Texas, with a rare condition that prevents her from gaining weight, and she is blind in her right eye. From her first day at daycare, when her classmates recoiled in fear at the sight of her, her parents repeated a lesson: go to school with your head held high, smile, and be kind to everyone, no matter how they treat you.
She decided to take their advice. She started her own YouTube channel to show who the person behind the video was, gave a TED Talk that racked up millions of views, and starred in the documentary “A Brave Heart”, which won the audience award at the SXSW festival in 2015.
And when asked about the people who made that video, she says she would gladly forgive them.