hell yeah

“My vitiligo first showed up when I was 18 or 19. I felt really unattractive for a long time. I used makeup on it for a while, and then I moved to New York, and the stress of all that made it spread. I got to a point where I realized I just couldn’t wear makeup anymore, so I stopped.

“Now I’m a bartender, so I’m in the public eye all the time. I get people asking me about it, and being like, ‘That’s so cool!’ It can be frustrating. It’s just my body; I can’t do anything about it. Same with dating — I’ve gotten people who were like, ‘That’s kind of hot.’ I don’t want to be a fetish for someone. But it’s different when the other person has it. Recently, a woman at my job came up to me and was like, ‘Hey, I have vitiligo too, and I think it’s so great that you’re rocking short sleeves and everything.’ That felt good! The feeling was mutual. It felt like community, not novelty.

“But then, a different woman came up to me in line in the grocery store and was like, ‘Oh my god, have you seen that model who has what you have? I just wish there were more models that looked like you when I was a kid, because I had a friend with what you have.’ I mean, what I have is called vitiligo. It felt like she was trying to express how cool she was with it, when actually, why shouldn’t you be cool with it?

“Vitiligo doesn’t make me who I am; my experiences in life have done that. But I’ve embraced it — there’s nothing that I can or should do about it. I don’t have to explain myself or apologize. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.” — Brian