This digital content creator is empowering people with vitiligo to develop self-love and confidence

The women across the world are taught from a young age to attach their self worth with their physical appearance. They are supposed to match the conventional beauty standards to get social approval. Aastha Shah, a confident Indian woman living with vitiligo inspires people to break the beauty stereotypes and stop attaching their self-worth to factors such as height, weight, skin color or other external factors.

A prominent vitiligo awareness and acceptance advocate, she creates digital content for social media platforms and motivates people to get over the body image issues by embracing their inner beauty and authentic self.

It is said to never judge a book by its cover, but in real life, most of the people around us make an opinion about others from their outer appearances as they are accustomed to the ‘rigid’ beauty stereotypes. That’s why people with vitiligo are judged more than often owing to their patchy skin.

With her tale of acceptance and self-love, narrated in the form of videos and photos, Aastha spreads the message of body positivity and inspire her followers to become more open about their physical appearance related insecurities.

Sometimes people would message me that after watching my videos, they have started to make peace with their vitiligo and now they are also going to do the same thing. They are also going to post their non-filtered photos on social media to show the world as they are. Every time I receive such a message, it makes my day.

Aastha didn’t get super comfortable with vitiligo overnight 

Today, Aastha proudly flaunts her skin condition with pride, but it didn’t happen overnight. Rather, it has truly been a roller coaster ride.

For the first few years, vitiligo was a nightmare for her, but now it’s the face of her unique personality and confidence.

It all started 16 years ago when Aastha was just in the second standard. One day she randomly noticed some spots on her hands. Her parents perceived it a minor infection or injury which will get healed as time passes, but the spots started growing instead and spread to other areas of her body. The first doctor they visited diagnosed it a skin allergy and prescribed her some medicines.

The medicines did nothing and the spots kept growing. Her father did some research on the internet to find out that it is not a minor skin allergy but vitiligo, a chronic autoimmune skin condition.

When they enquiry the doctor about this misdiagnosis, he revealed that he knew how parents feel and react when their children are diagnosed with vitiligo. So, he didn’t reveal the name of the actual problem to them purposely.

From there started the frustrating journey of finding a cure for it.

Hectic and burdening are underrated words to describe how Aastha’s life has been as a child. It was a never-ending saga of visiting different doctors, trying different kind of medicines and home remedies, avoiding sunrays, diet restrictions, trips to temples and what not. Along with the schooling, taking time for all these activities became way too burdening on little Aastha.

On the top of that, offensive comments and distasteful behavior of people, including kids at her school, added more pain to her childhood.

In various interviews, she has discussed some of her painful childhood memories that people used to call her names like Dalmatian Dog and used to ask her questions like why does her skin looks half Indian and half American. Children would refuse to sit beside her because she had “sadela skin” (ugly skin) and people would stare at her awkwardly. The relatives would give unsolicited advice to try weird home remedies and products. Also, those relatives would tell her parents that probably she won’t get married due to her skin challenge.

Gradually, she got used to people’s insensitive words or behavior and it didn’t bother much. But the everyday battle to ‘fix’ vitiligo took a toll on her life. It literally took all the fun out of her life and to get a better skin became the sole purpose of her life.

She tried all sorts of things for 6 years, but nothing worked. Instead, her life became a colorless, restricted one with so many rules and regulations.

Now, she just wanted to give up on chasing a cure for her skin and reclaim a fun filled, carefree life a young kid of her age deserved.

So she decided not to penalize herself anymore for something she has no control over.

She straight-up went to her father and told him that she didn’t want to see a doctor anymore. She would rather accept her skin as it is and focus on real things in her life such as education and career. Her father fully supported her decision and encouraged her to live life to the fullest. For instance, her parents would always encourage to wear clothes of her choice rather than wearing a dress just to hide the spots.

If you are a parent to a child with vitiligo, at least you should not pinpoint it as a weakness because the society is already doing that. You should love your child unconditionally and become his/her ultimate support system.

Encourage your child to live life on own terms without getting dictated by society’s misconceptions about vitiligo. For an incurable skin condition like vitiligo, A little bit of love and support from family and friends can bring remarkable change in a child’s life. After all, it’s all about accepting yourself rather than running behind perfection.

Kudos to a fresh start!

After bidding farewell to treatment efforts, Aastha finally started living a normal life finding happiness in the little moments of her life.

As a small child she enjoyed coke a lot but during the treatment, coke or any other carbonated soft drink was not allowed. So when she took a sip of coke after almost a gap of 6 years, she felt jubilant.

She was trying to normalize her skin and regain confidence, one step at a time.

She shared in one of the interviews that she never had the confidence to wear sleeveless dresses or shorts.

On the insistence of her parents, she gathered confidence to dress up in a short dress exposing her skin, but she got a lot of stares on the streets which discouraged her.

Still, it was quite a liberating experience and she felt very light and relaxed.

She would share her feelings and emotions with parents and close friends and they would always support and encourage her.

Their love and care made Aastha stronger than ever and she was ready to walk on this challenging but satisfying path of vitiligo acceptance.

If you start focusing on the good things in life that you are blessed with, you will notice that every day is a new opportunity to live life to the fullest. You are beautiful in your own way, so wear that skin with confidence and shine bright.

Aastha Shah as a digital content creator

At day time, she works as a financial analyst with a leading bank and after the work hours she produces digital content to help people become comfortable in their own skin.

It started during second Covid-19 lockdown in Mar-April 2021 when she decided to share her story on social media, hoping to touch a few lives and give them hope and inspiration. She posted a video showing her life journey as her skin gets de-pigmented over a period of time from a few spots to complete de-pigmentation. It went viral and generated more than 32 million views.

 

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A post shared by Aastha Shah (@aasthashah97)

It was such a pleasant surprise and motivated her to make more such content to inspire more and more people.

So she started off with motivational content and then started making dance and fashion related videos as well to make the content more versatile and engaging.

In short, she creates feel good content having a combination of self-love, confidence and fun.

People would ask her that how she manages content creation on a regular basis along with a full time job, because both require an almost equal amount of effort. For her, content creation is a stress buster. It’s something that she really enjoys doing. She loves to dance as well as exploring latest fashion trends. So, after an exhausting long day at work, she feels excited to brainstorm different ideas and then picking a theme to make content. Sometimes, it does get tough to bring meaningful and engaging content but she doesn’t think it’s impossible.

Tackling unkind comments on the social media

As of today, she has more than 253k followers on Instagram and receives a lot of love and appreciation from her fans. But, every digital content creator is exposed to negative comments. No one is immune to discouraging remarks. So Aastha is not an exception either.

But, the good thing is that the positive feedbacks easily outnumber those occasional unkind feedbacks and living with vitiligo for so many years, she has developed that attitude to focus on the positive and ignore the negatives.

I have got my skin fully de-pigmented naturally and I have always specified in my videos, still, sometimes people would accuse me of undergoing surgery or skin bleaching to get ‘super white’ skin. Such comments used to bother me a bit initially and I would respond to such comments, but, not anymore. I know the truth and if someone is making false accusations based on their wrong assumptions, it’s their problem, not mine. There are so many people who look to me for inspiration and love my work, so I prefer to invest all my energy and time in creating content they like.

If she can do it, you can do it as well

She has travelled a long way from a small girl with vitiligo who believed that no one will accept her to a young confident woman giving interviews and making inspiring videos to help people accept their vitiligo and become comfortable.

If she can do it, anyone of us can do it as well.

Believe in yourself and embrace your flaws because that is where your beauty lies.

She also emphasized on developing a positive outlook towards life. If you look for negatives in other people or circumstances, you just can’t feel positive about your own life as well.

So, spread positivity, appreciate others and stay away from judgmental people.