01/01/2013
Collins Okello
Voted Most Inspirational Story of
2012! Please Share !!
When she was in high school, Lizzie
Velasquez was dubbed "The World's
Ugliest Woman" in an 8-second-long
YouTube video. Born with a medical
condition so rare that just two other
people in the world are thought to
have it, Velasquez has no adipose
tissue and cannot create muscle,
store energy, or gain weight. She
has zero percent body fat and
weighs just 60 pounds.
In the comments on YouTube,
viewers called her "it" and
"monster" and encouraged her to
kill herself. Instead, Velasquez set
four goals: To become a
motivational speaker, to publish a
book, to graduate college, and to
build a family and a career for
herself.
Now 23 years old, she's been a
motivational speaker for seven years
and has given more than 200
workshops on embracing
uniqueness, dealing with bullies, and
overcoming obstacles. She's a senior
majoring in Communications at
Texas State University in San
Marcos, where she lives with her
best friend. Her first book, "Lizzie
Beautiful," came out in 2010
winning the hearts of many around
the world and her second, "Be
Beautiful, Be You," was published
earlier September and In 2013 she's
hoping to write her third book.
"The stares are what I'm really
dealing with in public right now,"
she told Dr. Drew Pinsky in an
interview on CNN's Headline News.
But I think I'm getting to the point
where… instead of sitting by and
watching people judge me, I'm
starting to want to go up to these
people and introduce myself or give
them my card and say, 'Hi, I'm
Lizzie. Maybe you should stop
staring and start learning'."
Velasquez was born in San Antonio,
Texas; she was four weeks
premature and weighed just 2
pounds, 10 ounces. "They told us
they had no idea how she could
have survived," her mother, Rita,
45, told the Daily Mail. "We had to
buy doll's clothes from the toy
store because baby clothes were too
big." Doctors warned Rita and her
husband, Lupe, that their oldest
child would never be able to walk or
talk, let alone live a normal life.
(Her two younger siblings were not
affected by the syndrome.)
Instead, she has thrived. Her
internal organs, brain, and bones
developed normally, though her
body is tiny. Since she has no fatty
tissue in which to store nutrients,
she has to eat every 15 to 20
minutes to have enough energy to
get through the day. One brown eye
started clouding over when she was
4 years old, and now she's blind in
that eye and has only limited sight
in the other.
