Beauty YouTubers live seriously cool lives. They play in makeup for a living, get freebies, and make that good money doing what they love.
It all seems so easy.
Still, they're humans who go through stuff like the rest of us. Check out these eight YouTube superstars who got real about the conditions that affect their lives.
Jackie Aina has hyperhidrosis — a genetic condition that causes excessive sweating in certain areas of the body.
Jackie Aina specifically has it in her armpits although she did experience it with her feet during childhood.
"It kind of feels like being prisoner in your own body for something you can't control at all," she shared in a Facebook post.
Aina wears clothes with breathable fabric and gets Botox in her armpits to stop the sweating.
"I have to say it's one of the best decisions I've made this year, and I'm definitely going to be keeping this up," she said about the procedure.
Tati Westbrook has been very open about working through severe anxiety.
Tati often discusses how she deals with her anxiety via her Snapchat account.
"Anxiety is a real issue for me. It is a beast," she said in an October snap. "It is something that I constantly struggle with. In and out of my life there will be seasons where it shows up and then I have to adjust things and take care of myself."
The only place where Tati says she never gets anxiety attacks? Her makeup room, of course! "The funny thing about it is I never get crazy anxiety filming videos for my channel" she said. "No matter what’s going on, I feel like I can sit down, hold a piece of makeup, talk about it, talk about the colors, talk about the product. That’s always really fun for me.”
Raw Beauty Kristi revealed she has trigeminal autonomic cephalalgia — a brain condition "more commonly known as cluster headaches."
Trigeminal autonomic cephalalgia is a condition that causes clusters of sharp head and facial pains.
"It is one of the most painful conditions ever, and unfortunately I damn have it," she wrote during a Reddit chat with fans. "I take a three times daily medication to suppress it, and an abortive medication when I get an attack. Even with the prophylactic medication I still get attacks a few times per month unfortunately. I wish I didn't, but it's just the cards I was dealt."
Zoella also talked about her experience with panic attacks and anxiety.
“What a lot of you may not know is that I have suffered with anxiety and panic attacks really really really badly since I was 14,” she shared in a 2012 video on her channel.
In a 2011 blog, she shared that one of her triggers is being in a place where she feels she cannot escape or will have difficulty traveling through.
"You are not alone, panic attacks are VERY common, and although terrifying, will not kill you," she wrote to readers who share her experience. "Don’t let your attacks ruin your confidence or dent your self esteem, you are an amazing person, and you CAN stop them, with the right treatment and techniques."
Martina (of Simon and Martina) has Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, and experiences chronic pain as a result.
The Ehlers-Danlos syndromes affect the body's connective tissues. These conditions commonly affect joints and skin, and can lead to chronic pain. In this video, Martina shares how she "builds a ladder" to bring herself up and out of the darkness and pain caused by Ehlers-Danlos.
Stef Sanjati was born with Waardenburg syndrome.
“I have a genetic mutation called Waardenburg syndrome,” Stef said in a 2012 video. “It affects my facial structure, the pigmentation in my hair, my body, and my skin, and also my hearing.”
Stef made a follow-up video in 2017 in which she clears up several points about the genetic condition. "It's not a disease… I don't need to look "normal." I look cool as hell!"
Like Tati and Zoella, Jaclyn Hill spoke about how she overcomes anxiety and depression.
"I hate referring to it as 'my' anxiety and 'my' depression," Jaclyn shared on her Snapchat in May. "Because I’m like ‘No, I don’t want to own this shit. It’s not mine.' This doesn’t define me and I don’t have to be like this my entire life. I can get through this. I’m gonna get through it.”
Alice Thorpe experiences serious migraines.
"A lot of people don't understand what goes into having a migraine," Alice says. "They think it's just a headache."
Thorpe describes her migraines as a series of disorienting symptoms. "First, I feel that my hands don't belong to my body. Then I end up with my eyesight going. I lose all orientation. Then I develop a really strong headache, usually on one side, and it just THROBS. Then I get pins and needles, sometimes on just one side of my body, and then I go numb. It just feels so weird. Then I just feel sick, but after I've been sick… the headache can go."
She's been experiencing migraines since she was 10 or 11, and at the time she made this video, said that many things could trigger them. Migraines also affect how she lives her life — for example, if she forgets her glasses, she can't look at a screen at all. "I have to be really, really careful how I go through my day," she says.
Kathleen Lights opened up about her experience with fibrocystic breast disease to her Twitter followers.
Fibrocystic breast disease causes (sometimes) painful lumps in breasts.
"It sounds worse than it is," Lights clarified with fans online. "It's not harmful and A LOT of women have it!"
"I'm just nervous about it because when you have this it can make detecting breast cancer harder," she continued. "Because the cysts can cover it and breast cancer runs in my family a lot. So I'm a bit anxious."
Haley Adozie has polycystic ovary syndrome — also known as PCOS.
She got real about her diagnosis, and the challenges she faces living with PCOS, in this video.
These stories are based on posts found on Reddit. Reddit is a user-generated social news aggregation, web content rating, and discussion website where registered members submit content to the site and can up- or down-vote the content. The accuracy and authenticity of each story cannot be confirmed by our staff.
