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Lizzie Velasquez Responds To Cruel Facebook Meme

By Lindsay McCane
Published on: 14:27 PST, Dec 14, 2016

Lizzie Velasquez has issued a statement about a cruel meme, featuring her picture, that has started circulating on social media.

If you use social media at all, particularly Facebook, you have more than likely seen the latest popular meme. There are several variations of the meme, but all of them have a picture of someone with a less than desirable appearance, and are asking for you to tag a certain person. Recently, someone created one of the memes using Lizzie Velasquez’s photo, and now she is speaking out.

Velasquez was born with a rare, undiagnosed congenital disease that makes it impossible for her to put on any body fat. Therefore, she maintains an incredibly frail appearance. Throughout her life, Lizzie has been subjected to bullying over her appearance, which is one of the reasons she decided to become a motivational speaker.

When Lizzie saw the meme, she decided to share it herself on Instagram to call attention to the mindless way we share these awful photos on social media. The picture shows her standing next to a tree, and reads, “Michael said he would meet me behind this tree for a bit of fun. He’s running late, will someone please tag him and tell him I’m still waiting.” Read Velasquez’s response to the meme below.

“I’ve seen a ton of memes like this all over @facebook recently. I’m writing this post not as someone who is a victim but as someone who is using their voice. Yes, it’s very late at night as I type this but I do so as a reminder that the innocent people that are being put in these memes are probably up just as late scrolling through Facebook and feeling something that I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy.

“No matter what we look like or what size we are, at the end of the day we are all human. I ask that you keep that in mind the next time you see a viral meme of a random stranger. At the time you might find it hilarious but the human in the photo is probably feeling the exact opposite. Spread love not hurtful words via a screen. Xoxo Lizzie”

Since responding to the cruel meme on Sunday, her post has been liked nearly 30,000 times and has received nearly 3,000 comments from her fans offering their love and support. Lizzie was so overwhelmed by her followers’ response that she decided to share a quick video to thank them.

“Today I posted what I did at 3 a.m. just thinking whoever was up late was going to see it and as of recently there’s almost 10,000 of you that have shared my post,” she said in the video.

“I posted what I did as a way to use my platform that you guys have given me. To be able to use my voice and say, just, when you see something online remember that there is a human that is being affected by it. It might be funny at the time but there is someone who’s probably not feeling that it’s that funny. Think before you tweet, think before you share, think before you like. Because we just want to be accepted. That’s it.”

This isn’t the first time Lizzie has been the subject of harsh criticism for her appearance. According to Yahoo Beauty, in 2006, a video of Velasquez at age 13, titled “The World’s Ugliest Woman,” went viral. In her true brave fashion, Velasquez responded to the video by writing a letter to the person who created it, explaining how it had affected her life.

“I’ve found that often people hurt other people not because they want to harm them but because they are coming from a place of hurt themselves,” she wrote. “If that was the case for you, I hope you’ve found a way to express your own pain in a way that doesn’t hurt someone else.”

[Featured Image by Michael Buckner/Getty Images]

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