Lizzie Velasquez Talks About How Being Called The ‘World’s Ugliest Person’ Turns Her ‘Life Upside Down’

In a world where being different from the usual is viewed as a bad thing, Lizzie Velasquez proves that accepting herself has given her happiness and confidence. 26-year-old Velasquez was born with a rare disorder called Marfan's syndrome.  

"Basically, what this syndrome causes is that I cannot gain weight," she says.

Velasquez was born weighing only two pounds and ten ounces. Huffington Post noted that doctors even thought that she would never be able to walk, speak or do anything on her own because of the disorder.

Despite all of this, her parents told the doctors "we want to see her and we are going to take her home and love her and raise her to the best of our abilities' and that's what they did."

"I credit pretty much everything that I've done in my life to my parents," Velasquez shares.

However, even with the support coming from her parents, relatives and colleagues, her journey of being "different" was not easy. Velasquez have gone through tough times before she has stumbled into something that changed her whole life.

When she was 17, Velasquez found an eight-second video uploaded on YouTube that contains her image calling her "the world's ugliest woman."

The video has profoundly affected her that she even thought about killing herself. Velasquez found herself crying for hours as she reads the comments under the video.

"Maybe I should take myself out of this world. If so many people are saying it, then maybe they're right," she says.

"But there was a little voice in the back of my head that kept telling me not to listen. My parents said we have to learn to forgive them because we don't know what's going on in their lives."

As she went on, Velasquez has learned not to bother of what other people think of her and decided to focus on making herself better.

"Over time I learned that the only way I could show those people that they weren't going to become my definition and my truth was to somehow make myself better," she tells the audience in Texas State University.

"That YouTube video turned my life upside down. For so long I felt like I was alone in this world. But now I know that it's okay to go through that struggle," she adds.

Velasquez also says that vulnerabilities and weaknesses will make a person more eager to improve.

International Business Insider forecasted on July 13 that Velasquez experienced being called a monster. Some even told her that "she should have been aborted at birth." Velasquez is grateful that she has conquered these things which brought transformation into her life.

"We all have gone through some hardships at some point in our lives, and meeting so many different people and cultures and different ages, all of us connect in one way or another on the things we have gone through," she says.

Velasquez has written three inspirational books: "Be Beautiful, Be You," "Choosing Happiness" and "Lizzie Beautiful: The Lizzie Velasquez Story."