Lizzie Velasquez: How the activist named 'world's ugliest woman' tackled trolls by launching a global campaign

The 26-year-old defeated bullies by becoming one of the world's most recognised anti-bullying campaigners

Lizzie Velasquez delivers a speech during a conference at the National Auditorium in Mexico city, on September 5, 2014 (AFP/Getty Images)

Lizzie Velasquez, the activist once named the “world’s ugliest woman”, has described how she tackled bullying and online trolls by launching a global anti-bullying campaign.

Ms Velasquez, from Texas, has a rare syndrome preventing her from putting on weight. She weighs just 58 lbs and is blind in one eye.

At 17, she discovered a video of herself entitled “World’s Ugliest Woman” on YouTube. The video had been viewed more than four million times and garnered hundreds of cruel comments, including one telling her parents to "kill it with fire" and another asking why they chose not to abort her.

Ms Velasquez responded by launching an anti-bullying campaign, which she summarised in an inspiring TED talk in 2013. Her full speech has been viewed over seven million times.

The 26-year-old also launched a Kickstarter campaign to raise $180,000 (£107,000) towards a documentary on her life. A Brave Heart: The Lizzie Velasquez Story premiered on 25 September.

The film follows Ms Velasquez up until the moment her TED talk made her internationally famous and documents her fight to have the first federal anti-bullying bill passed by Congress.

“I always knew I wanted to show those people that they weren’t going to define me. I didn’t want the definition of me that they were creating to become my truth. I wanted to make my own truth,” she told Fox News.

“There were thousands and thousands of awful comments, all along the lines of: the world would be a better place if I weren’t in it.

“Each comment I read I felt like someone was physically putting their fist through the screen and punching me.”

A number of high profile actors have joined Velasquez’s latest campaign to mark Bullying Prevention Month this October. Chris Hemsworth, Octavia Spencer, Kylie Jenner and Bryce Dallas Howard join a number of famous faces who all appear in her I'm With Lizzie video on her YouTube channel, which now has over 460,000 subscribers.

Ms Velasquez is calling on Congress to introduce the Safe Schools Improvement Act, a federal anti-bullying law that would require school districts to introduce policies to protect children at risk of being bullied. Find out more about I'm With Lizzie here.