When Nchom—who goes by Shalom Blac on YouTube—was nine years old living in Nigeria, an accident involving frying oil at her family’s food store left her with serious burns all over her face, head, and shoulders (she shares the horror of that day in detail on her YouTube channel).
Most of her hair was gone, and the tops of her ears fused to her head. But the trauma didn’t end there.
After four months in the hospital, she was discharged and began to see life through the eyes of someone who looks different. “People began to stare at me, or look at me in a nasty way,” she recalls. “One of my neighbors, we used to play together, came in my house and when he saw me ran away crying.” She reacted by lashing out at people.
An aunt who lived in the United States helped Shalom’s family get visas so she and her baby sister (who was also badly burned) could come here to get reconstructive surgery. Even after, she’s had to live with very noticeable scarring. “I was bullied very badly in middle school; I always had a scarf and a wig on, so people wouldn’t know I was bald,” she says.
For a while, Nchom, now 20 and living in Maryland, had suicidal thoughts. But as she met other burn victims who were worse off, it changed her perspective. “You have to be grateful for what you have, because you never know what someone else may be going through,” she says. Then she discovered makeup around age 13. “I started young, just so I wouldn’t get made fun of at school,” she shared with us via email. Through watching tutorials by gurus like Beatfacehoney, Kandee Johnson, and Irishcel507, she began to perfect a technique and love the artistry. About three years ago, felt confident enough to begin posting videos of her own, and now she’s inspiring others, including those who have scars from burns or acne, to make the most of what they have. In one video, she details exactly how she covers her own scars so expertly. “Of course you cannot make it disappear,” she says—but the difference her makeup makes is incredible.
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