“I grew up with an extremely normal childhood. I was my parents’ first born and -- I mean, when you’re first-time parents and told your daughter is 2 lbs, 10 oz and the doctors show you a polaroid of me, because they think that you’re going to be scared of your own child? The first thing my parents said is, 'Bring her to us right now. She’s our daughter no matter what size she is.' To have that foundation from day one has shaped a lot of who I am now. When I was younger, I saw what everyone else saw. The supermodels on magazine covers. The gorgeous actresses in movies and on TV. I was 17 when I found the video on YouTube calling me the world’s ugliest woman, with my photo, and knew that over 4 million people had seen it. There were thousands of comments on this video, and I sat there and read every single one, because I was so desperate to find one person that was standing up for me, and I never found it. I was living with my parents at the time and had my door slightly opened, and when I looked out, I saw my mom. She was just sitting there watching TV, and I knew if that video crushed me as much as it did, I couldn’t imagine what it would do to her. My idea of what beauty was sort of just diminished. If I’m the ugliest person in the world, where does that standard of beauty even begin? And I think that’s where the light was turned on for me, that I’m not going to let their words become the definition for who I am. You can put makeup on and you can do your hair, you can do all of these things. But when you take that makeup off and go to bed at night, and you’re stripped down to just you… What do you have? You have your personality, you have your values, you have the things that mean the most to you, you have your dreams. That’s what the standard of beauty to me is, the person that you are and not the person that you look like.” --@littlelizziev in our newest video of Dispelling Beauty Myths with @Allure Watch the full video at allure.com/disabilities
