Social media star Briel Adams-Wheatley has shared a message to online trolls who send her hateful comments.
The makeup guru has dealt with her fair share of flack since kickstarting her career as a content creator, despite using her platform to spread positivity.
She doesn't shy away from answering difficult questions about her circumstances - as demonstrated when she issued a response to a burning question thousands of people have posed to her.
The influencer recently opened up about how adopting a different mindset helped her stop 'crying over comments' that were left under her videos.
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These days, Briel embraces the traction that hateful remarks left underneath her clips bring to her social media accounts instead of getting upset about them.
The 26-year-old has always been candid about her life story online and how she doesn't let having no limbs limit her.
She was born in São Paulo, Brazil, and was later adopted by a family in the US state of Utah after being abandoned by her birth parents.
Briel has Hanhart Syndrome, a rare condition which means that she was born without any arms or legs. A few years back, she transitioned into a woman after growing up as a male.
She began sharing makeup videos online when the coronavirus pandemic hit. After the first time that she posted footage of her painting her face 'from the chest up', she explained that it 'did really well'.
Speaking to People in March this year, Briel said: "But all the comments were like, ‘Why aren’t you using your hands?'"
The content creator, who boasts a whopping 5.3 million followers on TikTok and another 1.3 million on Instagram, has always been open and honest about her life with her army of supporters.
She publicly announced that she was transgender in 2023 and explained that after sharing this news, it allowed her to finally feel 'like she could actually breathe'.
Briel recalled how she received a ton of support from her followers - but that wasn't always the case, as she previously dealt with a lot of criticism from keyboard warriors.
She'd often be met with a lot of hate after showing off her makeup skills online, but says she no longer lets this get to her.
"When I first started posting, I let everything affect me," she said. "I’d be crying in the bathroom over comments. But eventually, I realised you have to protect yourself mentally.
"Now I’m like, ‘Thanks - you’re paying my bills!' If I could talk to my younger self, I’d say, 'It’s just not that deep'.
"People are either going to love you or hate you, but it doesn’t need to make or break you. You decide what makes or breaks you."
The drive to prove people wrong is a big part of what inspires Briel to continue uploading content, as she gets a kick out of showing doubters that she is in fact 'fully capable' despite her physical limitations.
"That’s one of the reasons I do social media; to show people that disability doesn’t mean what they think it means," she continued.
"I never had friends with disabilities when I was younger, so I always felt like I was facing everything alone."
Briel explained that her husband Adam, who she met on Tinder in 2020, is also her number one fan and biggest supporter.
"Adam has understood me from day one," she said, before addressing the one question that a ton of people pester her with - how did he deal with the news that she wanted to transition?
"He was nervous at first," Briel admitted.
"But I told him, ‘This has always been who I am. I just need to be fully myself'. And once he saw that, he was completely on board."
Topics: TikTok, Viral, Social Media, US News
Olivia Burke