"People Called Me 'Dalmatian Dog' While Growing Up"

Aastha Shah is a model with vitiligo and no matter how confident she looks now in front of the camera, she wasn't like that from the very start. Here's her story:

"I was 8 when the doctors told my parents, ‘This isn’t just a white patch, she has Vitiligo'. It was extremely hard for us to cope up with that fact & my parents tried every medicine on the list - nothing helped me get rid of those patches."

"What people didn’t understand that it wasn’t just my physical health that was being affected - it was my actually mental state that was going downhill. I had low self-esteem & battled anxiety. Things got so bad that I was even afraid to walk on streets as people’s staring eyes just pierced my heart. I’d sit alone in my room for hours staring at the wall, spaced out & think, ‘why me?’"

"At 14, I finally told my parents that, ‘I want to feel alive again’! I wanted to stop with the daily medications & appointments. I wanted to break free from my inferiority complex & a routine that just included school & doctor visits. I’d gathered the courage to tell my story to the world someday. But for that, I had to step out & create one!"

"Since that day, I stopped taking medicines & cancelled all the pending doctor appointments. My only therapy was going out for a walk in the sun, which I wasn’t really allowed before, making new friends or dancing. My family started encouraging me to wear shorts or sleeveless clothes & flaunt my skin fearlessly! Yes, it was difficult at first but as I got used to nasty stares, people got used to looking through a person without caring about their physical appearance. By the time I was 20, my entire skin turned pale white naturally. It shook me, but I didn’t let myself shatter again!"

"That’s when a friend suggested me to put out my story for people to watch! In 2020, I made my account public & this changed my life as my story made thousands of people feel heard. I also started getting modelling offers & discovered the power of content creation. Today as I work with a renowned bank as well as collaborate with different brands, I have realised that all it took was a little bit of courage to be comfortable in my own skin & love myself."

Watch her story here. 

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