This confident woman from Pakistan is raising awareness about vitiligo

Pakistan’s first vitiligo ambassador Mehak is a 29 year old businesswoman, and freelance digital content creator. In the world’s fifth most populous country with more than 220 million people, vitiligo is a highly stigmatized condition to live with because awareness about this non-contagious skin condition hardly exists. It leaves the people with vitiligo to live with fear of getting judged and stigmatized.

Mehak has had her share of vitiligo borne hardships, but she has faced all of that with bravery in her heart and a smile on her face and now inspiring others to live confidently with it. Hailing from a small town in Pakistan’s Punjab province, Mehak has represented her country in International vitiligo conferences, events and awareness campaigns.

Life is hard when you get a skin condition like vitiligo; the society spares no chance to tear you apart by judging how you look, and commenting on your insecurities, being all insensitive towards you. But people like Mehak and Javeria proves to us that validation from others means nothing when you truly accept yourself and understand that your true worth depends on what’s inside and not on the outside.

Mehak noticed her first spot when she was about 12 years old. She had a bright white spot near her eye and a small one on her knee. She initially perceived it to be an injury scar, but her mother was quite concerned about it. She took her to a doctor and it was diagnosed as vitiligo.

The teenage Mehak didn’t bother, but seeing her mother worried, she realized that now things are going to change, not in a pleasant way.

I have interacted with so many people with vitiligo and just like everyone else, I too tried so many different kinds of treatments that my parents forced on me. Not their fault, they just looked for a cure but it was really frustrating going through those never ending treatment routines with some of them quite weird, non-scientific and even stupid ones. Being a young teenage girl, I just couldn’t resist my family at that time.

The young Mehak never bothered too much about vitiligo or what others are saying about it. But her family, particularly, her mother was worried for her future and seeing her in that state of mind, Mehak would also get tensed sometimes.

Actually vitiligo is considered a deal-breaker in marriage in South Asian countries including Pakistan and white spots were going to be quite prominent on her brown skin. So, it was quite a nightmare for her mother to deal with it. Moreover, the ladies from the neighborhood would always ask her mother so many questions and suggest her all sorts of remedies to treat it. In short, Mehak was way more troubled by her mother’s situation than those spots on her skin.

In desperation to get it treated, her family tried every possible treatment in Pakistan, including Allopathy, Homeopathy and Herbal remedies.

It was not restricted to science based medical treatments but irrational cures were also given a shot like faith healing by visiting mosques and shrines, hugging beggars over there and even putting someone’s saliva on the white spots. It doesn’t sound nice, right?

She was quite tired of those treatment attempts and to rub salt to her ‘wounds’, there were people and their questions and comments.

She often had to hear things like “Did you get a burn scar?”, “Did you drink milk over fish?”, “Stay away from her – it can be contagious!” or “Why don’t you get yourself treated?”. Some people even said it’s a consequence for her past life bad karma. Such distasteful comments didn’t make the things any easier for her.

It was frustrating to deal with awkward stares and unsolicited treatment advices all the times because of a skin condition which was not under my control.

In Pakistan, people with vitiligo are sometimes called with names that have unkind meaning like ‘the one with cow skin’ or ‘the one with leprosy’. She was also labeled with such names, but she would not give too much attention to such experiences because somewhere deep down, she had this understanding that a few spots on the body cannot determine her worth.

She was always confident in her skin and she never let Vitiligo affect her mental health. For her, it is not the appearance that matters.

After spending a good amount of time on various treatments with almost no success, she finally decided to stand up for herself and fight back by becoming comfortable with her appearance and accepting it as it is.

I never bothered to match the traditional beauty standards and never chased flawless fair skin to feel beautiful. I always loved the way I was and never gave too much importance to the outer beauty. So, it was natural to me accepting these harmless, painless white spots on my skin vitiligo as a part of my life. I mean, do we have any other option when we don’t know why it happened in the first place and there is no cure either.

In Mehak’s experience, the biggest barrier to self-acceptance is the deal with the unsolicited treatment advices that you will receive all the times from people who know nothing about the medical science. They may not have the wrong intention but it’s quite frustrating that how confidently they propose a cure when the medical world doesn’t have one yet.

Becoming Pakistan’s first vitiligo ambassador

Smacking the stereotypes, Mehak emerged to be the best version of herself and she credits vitiligo for this amazing transformation in her personality as a beautiful young woman full of confidence and self-love.

Growing up, she was disheartened that there was no individual or community in Pakistan raising awareness about vitiligo. There was no one for her to look up to for support and inspiration.

In the developed western countries, there are so many support groups, communities and individuals working for awareness and normalization of vitiligo. But, in a country as populated as Pakistan, not even a single person was advocating Vitiligo, a skin condition that affects around 2% of the world population. So, she decided to become one and do her bit in making Pakistan a better place to live for people with vitiligo.

With the evolution of social media, it is not difficult to become a vitiligo awareness advocate if you have accepted yourself and you have the compassion and courage to help others in this journey of self acceptance.

She has started an Instagram account and a YouTube channel to share content about living a happier and productive life with vitiligo.

 

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A post shared by Mehak | The Vitiligo Girl (@the.vitiligo.girl)

With her content, she is inspiring many of the people with vitiligo and bringing a smile to their faces. Also, her content is educating the society in general to change their attitude towards the chronic skin conditions like vitiligo, psoriasis, eczema and others.

She loves what she is doing and embraces every new spot that surfaces on her skin.

Each new spot teaches me to embrace the unexpected things in life and develop a stronger will to face people’s reactions and comments with more confidence. They make me more grateful for all the lovely things in my life. You know, vitiligo is neither painful not dangerous. There are so many health conditions that can be painful as well as life threatening. So, we should be thankful that in our case, we are spared from such complications.

Mehak urges people with vitiligo to take a stand for themselves because nobody will understand if one doesn’t speak about their challenges.

It’s high time people with vitiligo should tell the society that their stares and comments doesn’t go in good taste and one’s personal space and boundaries should be respected.

That’s why she wants more people in Pakistan and other developing countries (with low vitiligo awareness) to come up and get open about their skin conditions.

Let’s dump the ‘perfect skin’ thing and accept and celebrate our individuality because if we want others to treat us as normal and beautiful, we need to treat ourselves that way first.