Social media users criticized Naomie Pilula for her looks when she shared a selfie……CONTINUE FULL READING>>>>>
Pilula, the youngest of seven siblings, was born and raised in Zambia, a stunning country in the heart of southern Africa.
She said she was teased a lot about her nose growing up. Pilula grew to love her physical characteristics in her late teens and early twenties, and they were no longer a source of concern for her.
“I won’t say that there was that one day where I woke up and I looked in the mirror and said, ‘Yes,’ but there was just one point where you looked at yourself and said, ‘I like the way I look,’” she told People. “And that was me. And once I arrived at that point, no one can take that away because they didn’t give it to me.”
The 37-year-old, however, told People that because of her life experiences, her perception of beauty has evolved over time.
“In Zambia, my home country, beauty is more the curvaceous woman, the well-endowed woman,” Pilula explained. “And so, [as] somebody who is smaller, I was always told ‘eat more, fill out more.’”
Pilula studied at the University of Auckland in New Zealand and the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia. She recalled being the only Black person in her classes while in Australia.
Pilula, who currently practices law in Zambia’s financial industry, created her own sense of style, mended past traumas, and established a prosperous life for herself. Everything was going really well until June, when she got a particularly hurtful comment on one of her posts.
“I got a comment that said something about trying out rhinoplasty,” she begins. “And I think she caught me at a time where I was really pissed off, because I had received other comments and maybe even worse comments because I had people telling me outright, ‘You’re ugly,’ [and] ‘you don’t deserve to be on the internet.’”
“I do know that one of the most controversial features that I have, which is what blew up the internet, was my nose. It’s my father’s nose. Why would I want to remove a feature that identifies me with my father? It doesn’t make sense,” she remarked.
After posting and then removing an obviously “passive-aggressive” response video, Pilula decided to call her elder sister for guidance.
“The focus here shouldn’t be on what people say because people will say what people say, but the focus here is: Why is it pissing you off?” she recalled her sister asking her. “Because another comment wouldn’t have. So there’s something about this that pisses you off.’”
Pilula became aware “that maybe I’m not as healed as I thought I was” after hearing her sister’s wise comments.
So Pilula returned to her source: God. She cited the well-known Bible verse Psalm 139:15-16 as a key point of knowledge of self and purpose.
“So that [scripture] is telling me that, look, God actually put you together,” she told People. “If it’s flowing from my relationship with God and understanding who he is, understanding who he’s created me to be, then what can people say? There’s nothing you can tell me. So that is the healing journey. And I don’t know how it can be done outside of God, at least in a permanent way.”
And when Pilula shared a “Happy Monday!” selfie in June, she had to stand by this exact foundation.
The image went viral, receiving over 530,000 shares and comments on Instagram, most of which were negative. Pilula said that this is her most popular post to date, and even though she considered taking it down, she kept thinking of another verse from the Bible.
Despite the hostility, Pilula believes that, like Joseph in the Bible, things worked out in her favor.
She said, “So it reminds me, ‘Okay, look. If you weren’t resilient, if you didn’t love yourself the way you do, this kind of backlash would destroy you.’ But then it made me realize that the posts with the worst backlash are also the posts that I’ve gained the most followers. So it is the idea that if the purpose of this was destroying me, I’m not going to agree with that purpose.”
“I began April with 1,000 followers. We are now in August – I have 20,000 followers. So when I say that this has been insane, I really mean that this has been insane,” she added. “It’s not me doing anything outside of what I would normally do. So I’m not trying to get anything, I’m just doing what I would normally do on social media. Like it or not, this is what I’m going to do.”
She is now embracing her identity and, ideally, inspiring others to do the same.
“I really, really want people to see God. I want people to see confidence. I am not [an] aesthetically beautiful person. I’m not, and that’s okay,” she remarked. “But I love myself and I can be myself. And with that is a certain level of beauty because there is a light that everyone has and that deserves to shine.”…..CONTINUE FULL READING>>>>>
