Bullied for being ALBINO but I've embraced my pale skin and white hair

Real Fix

Credit: SWNS / Fleur Van Der Ven  A woman bullied for being albino has embraced her pale skin and white hair and says kids now often mistake her for Elsa from Frozen.   Fleur Van Der Ven, 20, didn't realise she was different until she was seven and other children started to avoid her - cruelly calling her a vampire and a ghost.   She claims she was picked on for her appearance - which left her dyeing her locks dark brown and coating her white eyelashes in black mascara.  But at the age of 15, Fleur learnt to embrace her albinism and stopped dyeing her hair and wearing a full face of make-up.

Transcript

00:00 Sometimes it was quite difficult to accept the fact that I was always going to be different

00:03 and that not a lot of people would want to be friends with me.

00:08 My name is Fleur. I'm a Dutch girl, I'm 20 years old and I have albinism.

00:18 More specifically, oculocutaneous albinism.

00:21 And that's also why we're here, to talk about it and my experiences.

00:26 It definitely came with some challenges because even though I'm European and a lot of people here are blonde,

00:33 I still stand out because no one has white hair or nystagmus that makes my eyes shake.

00:40 And I'm also very pale, so I did get picked on quite a lot when I was younger.

00:44 People would exclude me, or well, kids would exclude me from friend groups or activities.

00:50 And it was just really hard to make friends and that really stunted my confidence and my self-esteem.

00:58 And obviously albinism also comes with a visual impairment, so that also made my life a lot more difficult.

01:04 So I couldn't as easily cycle to places on my own or do certain things that everybody else could.

01:12 Like for example in PE, I could almost never participate.

01:15 So yeah, I was excluded from a lot, not only for my appearance but also for my visual impairment.

01:21 Sometimes it was quite difficult to accept the fact that I was always going to be different

01:24 and that not a lot of people would want to play with me or be friends with me.

01:31 But luckily as you get older, that does change.

01:33 I feel like I'm very confident now in my own skin, because I've really had to learn to accept myself.

01:39 When I started working at a recreational park where a lot of kids visit,

01:45 they started comparing me to Elsa, because you know, I have her hair color, Elsa's also very pale and she has blue eyes.

01:52 And so kids would compare me to her or be like "hey mom, she looks like Elsa" or "look, it's Elsa".

01:59 And I thought that was really sweet and that really did give me a confidence boost,

02:03 because I had very negative experiences with children before.

02:08 And now as an adult, seeing that there are also a lot of kids who are nice to me or who admire the way that I look,

02:16 that really gave me confidence.

02:18 I always say that you can never absolutely please everyone, so it's better to just be yourself and embrace who you are.

02:26 Now if you want to change something about your appearance and if you really want that and you're not doing it for someone else,

02:31 then you should do that.

02:33 But you have to think to yourself "why am I doing this and for whom am I doing it?"

02:39 And if it's not yourself, then you should take a step back and re-evaluate a bit.

02:45 Because you can never make everyone happy, someone's always gonna have some opinion on your appearance or your personality or whatever it may be.

02:54 So there's really no point in trying to please everyone, because it's just impossible.

02:58 Just be yourself and express yourself in the way that you want to.

03:03 [Music]

03:10 [Music]

03:13 [BLANK_AUDIO]

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