A woman has started creating stunning body artwork based on her own skin condition after battling a painful confidence crisis.
Ash Soto, from Florida, stopped going swimming and was too scared to wear a bikini after a group of children asked if she had ‘showered in bleach at a pool party.
The 24-year-old has vitiligo – a condition where the skin loses pigmentation, going white in patches and growing over time. There is no cure and it can be dangerous for sufferers to go out in bright sunlight.
She first noticed the condition when she was just 12, and a small white spot appeared on her neck. She said even going to school was difficult because children made incredibly cruel remarks about her skin.
‘The spots on my elbows and my arms started getting bigger, I felt very helpless,’ Ash told Barcroft TV.
‘They would act like I was contagious; I’ve been called cow and asked if I was trying to be white.’
She even lost her friendship circle as people started to avoid her. Despite living in the heat of Orlando, Ash started wearing winter coats and a beanie out in the summer to cover her skin.
‘I was a shell of the person that I used to be, I didn’t recognise myself anymore,’ she explains.
On social media, Ash would only ever post pictures of her face – never showing her skin condition. But then she plucked up the courage to show her vitiligo on Instagram, which she sees as her ‘turning point’.
‘I was tired of looking at my skin in a negative light, I didn’t want to be so sad,’ she adds. ‘I felt like if I could build myself up and be confident, I could teach others.
‘And if that meant putting myself out there on social media being unapologetically myself then I would do that.’
Ash says she was so nervous to post the picture showing off her condition that her fingers were shaking. She was scared of the backlash and the mean comments, but she knew she had to do it.
And she was blown away by the positive response.
‘Other people started writing to me to say that they also had this skin condition, we started relating stories and I’m like, “my God, I’m not alone”‘, she says. That’s when she decided to take it even further by creating artwork based on her condition.
Ash started tracing the lines of her vitiligo and creating pieces of art out of the skin she used to hate. The effect is similar to a natural tattoo.
Ash recently built up the courage to go to a swimming pool with her best friend Paulina, who came with her to offer support.
Despite being able to post photographs of her skin showing online, Ash says she still finds it difficult to transfer her new-found confidence to the real world.
‘I feel nervous about people seeing my skin because I still get stares,’ she says. ‘It triggers me and brings back memories of what I went through before.’
She explains that learning to love herself is a process, but she says she has made big leaps with her confidence.
‘I still feel nervous about people seeing my skin, I just have to teach myself that it’s okay to be different,’ she continues.
‘Now, when I look in the mirror, I don’t see this as monster skin anymore, I see it as the extra specialness that adds to my uniqueness.
‘I try to remind myself that all those things that I’ve gone through have got me here.’
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source https://metro.co.uk/2020/02/03/woman-creates-stunning-body-artwork-based-vitiligo-help-overcome-insecurities-12174842/
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