Taking a stand against bullying
Lizzie Velasquez visited Santa Ana on Tuesday night for the Newport Beach Film Festival. And, coming after a grim week of news, it was a welcome opportunity for perspective.
For those who haven’t seen Sara Hirsh Bordo’s documentary “A Brave Heart: The Lizzie Velasquez Story,” Velasquez is a Texas native who was born with a rare condition that prevents her from gaining weight. Nearly a decade ago, she unwillingly became the subject of worldwide attention when a YouTube video, containing a clip of several seconds, proclaimed her “The World’s Ugliest Woman.”
Some people, under those circumstances, might go into seclusion. Velasquez chose instead to retaliate — not with negativity, but with hope and encouragement. She created her own YouTube channel and posted a series of selfie videos. She gave a well-attended TED Talk, which led her to meet Bordo. She currently works as a motivational speaker and lobbies in Washington, D.C., for anti-bullying legislation.
When Velasquez arrived Tuesday at the Regency South Coast Village, she encountered a crowd that loved her and was ready to love her film. On the red carpet outside, fans gathered to have pictures taken with her while reporters milled about. After the screening, which drew enthusiastic applause, Velasquez and Bordo took part in a question-and-answer session with the audience.
As anyone who has seen “A Brave Heart” knows, Velasquez is both a political crusader and a typical millennial — vibrant, funny, tech-savvy, adventurous, happy to poke fun at herself. Before the festival audience, she came off the same way. Asked how she felt about being in a movie, she replied that it was still “surreal.” When the topic came up of how she weighed activism with everyday life, she gave her most telling answer of the evening.
“One of the things that I always want to stress, especially now, is, I do have a lot of courage, and I do have a lot of strength, but, at the end of the day, I’m a human and a 26-year-old hormonal girl who still gets upset and still has days where I’m just annoyed with things, or I’m annoyed that I can’t find clothes that fit like everyone else,” Velasquez said. “And there are times where I allow myself to have a certain day or a few hours to close all the blinds, listen to Adele — sad music — and cry and get it out of my system.”
Think for a moment about that list of attributes: human, hormonal, 26 years old. Prone to moods and frustration, sometimes needing time alone with the blinds down. Those qualities likely describe many of the people who have mocked Velasquez online, alone in their own dark rooms and irked at their situations in life. They likely describe many of us as well, 26 and otherwise.
Life is filled with hurtful and devastating actions, some of them caused by cyberbullying, some by tectonic shifts or urban unrest. There is no escaping them, and often no predicting. All we can control is how we react to them — if we exacerbate the pain by making it worse, or if we summon the strength to take the high road.
What Velasquez really meant by her comments, as I read them, is that we should view her not as a person who was ordained to make a difference, but as one who chose to do so. As powerful as nature and nurture may be, free will plays the largest part in the end. Velasquez was tormented as a teenager; so, likely, were many of those who have gone anonymously onto YouTube and ordered her to kill herself. Some people react to perceived injustice through nonviolent protest; others destroy businesses and drive their communities further into despair.
Every day’s newspaper makes a mockery of the hope that tragedy always brings out the best in human nature. Still, trying circumstances provide an opportunity to glimpse heroism more clearly. Those who have provided round-the-clock aid in Nepal, intervened to curb violence in Baltimore or campaigned on behalf of mistreated children have shown how laudable our efforts can be when a clear mission directs them.
Some of us wait until a crucial moment to accept that mission. Others take it upon ourselves to begin it earlier — and continue it long after the news cameras have moved on. Either way, considering the other choices at our disposal, it’s the mark of a brave heart.