Imagine you’re 17 years old. You’re surfing the web, procrastinating. You’re just passing the time on YouTube, watching insane videos and knowingly letting yourself rappel down into the rabbit hole of the internet. It’s nothing out of the ordinary, thousands of people are doing the exact same thing you are right at this exact second.
Except, in all likelihood, when you click a video plainly titled “THE WORLD’S UGLIEST WOMAN,” you won’t see your own face looking back at you.
This is what happened to Lizzie Velasquez, now 26 years old. Velasquez has a rare congenital condition, so rare that it doesn’t even have a name. It affects her vision and her immune system, among other things, but its most obvious impact is on her body. Velasquez has zero percent body fat, and is unable to gain weight.
While she’s been bullied by forces seen and unseen — cruel playground taunts, strangers sneering on the sidewalk, commenters on that YouTube video telling her to do unspeakable things and calling her unrepeatable names — instead of retreating into herself, Velasquez has taken full ownership of her own story and turned it into a force for good. She started a YouTube channel and began vlogging, delivered a TED Talk that went viral and even spoke before Congress in support of anti-bullying legislation.
And now, at this year’s South by Southwest Film Festival, Velasquez took yet another step forward in her personal journey with the debut of “A Brave Heart: The Lizzie Velasquez Story.” Velasquez is the subject and executive producer of the feature documentary, which chronicles her life and her impact on the world.
As I sat down to chat with Velasquez at the Four Seasons in Austin ahead of a panel she would lead with fellow YouTuber iJustine, we were immediately interrupted by an older man who had seen the premiere of “A Brave Heart” the afternoon before and wanted to congratulate Velasquez and say how much her story inspired him.
It’s an occurrence that’s becoming more common for Velasquez, who said of the standing ovation she received the day before, “I think I’m still speechless from it.”
Though this was the first time her documentary has gotten a stranger to come up and say hello, it’s hardly rare otherwise.
“I get a lot of it still from my TED Talk, actually,” she said. “It happened to me this morning. A girl came up to me and said, ‘I saw your TED Talk for the first time.’ So it’s been a mixture. The gentleman who just came up, that was the first time that’s happened.”
That’s not even to mention the more than 314,000 subscribers to her YouTube channel, who consider her a friend and ally. She plays with her dog, chats with her parents and often speaks directly to the camera about her day and the things she’s excited about.
“I don’t know these people, but turning on my camera and pressing record is like opening a small window into my life for people who might need a friend or who are watching my videos because they don’t have a social life or are stuck at home or whatever they may be, and because of that, it makes me feel good to share my life,” she said.
Velasquez is so positive, in fact, that if she met the person who originally posted that YouTube video labeling her the world’s ugliest woman, the one that went viral and inspired hundreds of pages of comments calling Velasquez vile names, she would thank him.
Yes, she would thank the person who posted something that made her cry on her bedroom floor for days and make her fear for her life. Because without the video, who knows what her life’s work might have been? She’s not only forgiven the poster, she sees a positive ripple from their actions. They changed her life, she changes the lives of thousands others through her vlogs, her appearances and now through “A Brave Heart.”
“I would absolutely say thank you,” she said. “Absolutely. Because if I never found that video, it wouldn’t have been the spark to change everything. I think I’d still be in a way helping people but I don’t know if it not the same way as now. I wouldn’t be mad. I’d be so grateful, which sounds so crazy. It changed everything.”
