Vlogger with visible difference discusses dealing with online bullying: 'You shouldn’t judge a person by how they look'
‘It’s a bit sad that people get satisfaction from making other people feel bad about themselves’
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Your support makes all the difference.Nikki Lilly has made an incredible impression on the YouTube community ever since launching her channel when she was only eight years old.
Now 13, the vlogger has garnered 348,000 followers as she raises awareness of visual differences with her plethora of positive and light-hearted videos.
Diagnosed with arteriovenous malformation when she was six years old, Lilly has occasionally been subjected to cruel comments from online trolls in regard to her appearance.
While many of Lilly’s viewers leave kind words on her vlogs, others have written comments such as “You’re ugly”, “You look disgusting” and even asking “What is that on your face?”
“Even though you do grow a stronger skin through getting comments like that and doing more of it, I definitely have, you’ll never be able to 100 per cent look at a comment and say, ‘It doesn’t get to me', 'It hasn’t touched a nerve' or made me think or feel a certain way’,” Lilly told Holly Willoughby and Phillip Schofield on ITV’s This Morning.
“It’s a bit sad that people get satisfaction from making other people feel bad about themselves.”
Lilly revealed that she’s never had anyone say anything unkind to her in person, as bullies choose instead to resort to the “cowardly” act of online trolling.
While this may be the case, a report published yesterday by charity Changing Faces discovered a quarter of young people stated that they or someone that they know has said something nasty to someone who has a visible difference.
On top of that, only three in 10 people would befriend someone who looks different, whether they have a mark, scar or visible disability.
Lilly believes strongly in not holding prejudices against people who look different, as it’s the inside that counts.
“You shouldn’t judge a person by how they look. You don’t know what their interests are,” she said.
“You shouldn’t judge a book by its cover and I feel like these days other people think that their condition or what they’re going through or their insecurity defines them and it doesn’t.”
86,000 children in the UK who are of a school age have a visible difference, with one in ten young people stating that the way they look makes them feel depressed.
In 2016, Lilly was awarded a Pride of Britain award for inspiring others with her far-reaching YouTube channel.
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