“I have my flaws, but I embrace them and I love them because they’re mine.”
“Regardless of what race, what color, what sex, what nationality, what sexual orientation – regardless of who you are, equality should always rule! Whatever is right for you is right. Period.”
“I am literally just a human. I have the same brain as you; there’s a skeleton under my skin just like yours.”
“It’s amazing what a little encouragement can do.”
“I am the underdog, and I want to prove that one can follow one’s dreams despite all the flaws and setbacks.”
“My modelling career is about hard work.”
“When I got older, it got harder because when kids get older, they get meaner, so I went through a lot of bullying and people calling me, like, ‘zebra’ or ‘cow,’ so it was really hard growing up.”
“You think of floating on a rock in space as so alien, but that’s exactly what we’re doing.”
“I didn’t have a problem with myself or my skin. I had a problem with the way people treated me because of my skin. They tried to define me.”
“I learned to love who I am despite what anyone would say about or to me. This gave me the courage to really stand up to anyone or any obstacle in my life.”
“Focus on your opinion of yourself and not the opinion others have of you.”
“The worst thing I’ve done while sad is sit in defeat. That’s very unhealthy. The best thing to do is dust yourself off and try again.”
“With my skin, I have to avoid direct contact with the sun, so that, combined with my mom being conservative, meant I grew up wearing stockings under shorts and long sleeves under tank tops. It was kind of embedded in me that I was supposed to be covering up.”
“I love to play with make-up. I adapt my beauty look to my outfit, so as soon as I know what I’m wearing, I know if I want to go for a red lip or a smoky eye. I usually won’t put those two together, but it all depends on what outfit I’m going for.”
“You can’t let someone else lower your self-esteem, because that’s what it is – self-esteem. You need to first love yourself before you have anybody else love you.”
“I always loved the spotlight, just not the negativity.”
“My parents separated before I was born, but they remained friends, so I was close to both sides of my family, with siblings and cousins and godparents. I’ve had the same best friend since grade six.”
“There is beauty in everything.”
“If humans want to see the same types of people over and over, that’s what industries will give us. If we want to see something different, that’s what they’ll have to give us.”
“Vitiligo is just another difference, like freckles, big hair, tiny ears Everyone has differences.”
“People have black skin, people have brown skin. I have both.”
“I loved myself. And with that, opportunities start to fall into my lap. And I thank God for all of them.”
“My confidence was more of a fake-it-until-you-make-it kind of thing. I tried to build my own confidence and not rely on the opinions of others.”
“A journalist in Toronto named Shannon Boodram saw my Facebook page and told me I was ‘strikingly beautiful.’ She shot a YouTube video of me, and it made a hit, grabbing thousands of views. She said the camera loved me and that I should be a model. I had never thought about modeling – it just hadn’t seemed possible.”
“I am happy with my skin, and I’m proud of my skin, which is why I wear it so boldly. But if a job wanted me to, say, try a smoky eye and cover the vitiligo around my eye, I wouldn’t have a problem with that.”
“I don’t really talk about ‘ANTM,’ although I’m very grateful for it, as it was the platform that allowed me to catapult to where I should have been.”
“It’s weird to me for people to stare at me, because I feel like I’m normal. I don’t see what there is to stare about.”
“I feel like I pull inspiration from everyone, and I feel like I’m honored and grateful that people feel that they can pull inspiration from me, be inspired by me. But I definitely don’t think I’m a role model. I’m not someone to be imitated.”
“I get comments saying that I’m a leper, I control how my skin changes, I bleach my skin, my skin’s burned. None of those are true.”
“I think we need to take a step back and realize what the real issues are – it’s not being from different places or being different.”
“I don’t do much cooking because it’s impossible when you travel so much. You go grocery shopping, buy everything, and then get a call to fly out for two weeks. By the time you’re back, all the food is rotten.”
“I’m just living life. And if that inspires you, I’m proud, but I’m not going to put pressure on myself to be the best person in the world and tell everyone I have vitiligo. If you want to know about it, you can do your research. Either way, I’m not in the dictionary under ‘vitiligo.’”
“I liked to hang around my mom’s beauty salon, watching her do hair.”
“With vitiligo, my skin is sensitive in extreme temperatures.”
“You should be careful what you choose to see as a role model, whereas inspiration can come from anywhere.”
“Winnie Harlow is my alter ego like how Beyonce refers to her stage name as Sasha Fierce.”
“The more people see, the more they want to see.”
“I was never raised as the daughter with vitiligo or the granddaughter with vitiligo or the cousin with vitiligo. I was just Chantelle.”
“Things were fine in elementary school, but when I moved schools in grade three, not only was I the new kid, I was the new kid with the skin condition.”
“I remember sitting by my window, wishing upon the stars that my skin condition would go away. I wondered, ‘Why me?’”
“People sometimes ask when I learned to love myself. But that was not the issue.”
“I had to relearn how to love myself by forgetting the opinions of everyone else and focusing on my opinion of myself.”
“Growing up, I didn’t have a lot of real friends, and the people I was friends with, I’ve grown apart from – they were frenemies more than anything.”
“I think you have to feel your best by yourself. I do think it’s important to have a solid friend that you can turn to, though – one that you can vent to.”
“I was a lucky kid, and I grew up connected to a lot of people.”
“I faced challenges as a kid, but who hasn’t? A lot of people have experienced far worse. I was bullied, sure, and it was painful at the time. I even quit high school to get away from it. But I’ve never been the kind of person to let my past predict my future.”
“Social media is a great way to get discovered in the industry because it’s free, it’s worldwide, and everyone’s on it – a very powerful combination.”
“I wasn’t born with vitiligo. It developed when I was 4 years old. My skin changed dramatically over the next few years.”
“I don’t remember my skin changing, but I do recall feeling deeply loved by my family.”
“Growing up in the greater Toronto area, I was a happy kid. I was my mother’s first child, surrounded by admiring godparents and cousins.”
“I discovered that I was ‘different’ in the third grade. As the new kid at school, I was trying hard to find my footing. I thought I had made friends with a couple of girls – until they stopped talking to me. When I confronted them, they said their mothers had warned them to stay away because they might catch my skin condition.”
“I loved reading magazines about the entertainment world.”
“Even as a little girl, my mom never wanted me to watch BET, but when I was at my grandparents’ house, and my older cousins were there and I could watch it, I was infatuated with the idea that I could one day be a DJ or the host of a show.”
“My skin’s not a normal sight.”
“If one day I’m all black, I’m still a model. If one day I’m all white, I’m still a model.”
“Some rules are there for a reason – but it’s one thing to have a rule that protects and another to have rules that stifle.”
“I feel like I have so many amazing opportunities because of my immigrant mother, my immigrant grandparents.”
“I’ve never been a die-hard Beyonce fan. I always thought she was inspirational and beautiful.”
“I wasn’t part of the BeyHive before I met her, but after my experience working with her, meeting her, I’m a die-hard fan.”
“Funnily enough, of course I’ve always thought B was amazing, but I’ve never been, like, ‘Beyhive status’… until actually meeting her. I would honestly drop anything I’m doing to work for her again. Not just because of who she is but because of my experience with her filming for two days.”
“For me, honestly, the term ‘role model’ means for someone to be imitated, and I don’t feel like anyone is to be imitated.”
“There wasn’t anyone who was specifically taking me under their wing. I definitely looked up to people, though, one major person being Naomi Campbell, of course. That’s, like, a given.”
“I’ve always been a lot about beauty and products, and skincare and make-up.”
“I’ve been doing my own makeup since I was 15. I would steal my mom’s products, go online, watch YouTube videos of girls doing their makeup, and try.”
“When I was in high school, I wanted to be so thick that I’d eat all the pizza and all the McDonald’s and everything.”
“If you’re not drinking enough water, or you’re not eating enough vegetables, or you’re not working out enough, or you’re not getting your toxins out, I feel like it always reflects.”
“To be completely honest, I never thought I could become a model growing up. I actually wanted to be an entertainment journalist.”
“Nick Knight was my first big gig as a ‘real’ model. Prior to and during ‘ANTM,’ I never actually called myself a model because I always viewed it as a hobby.”
“I want to see different faces on the covers of magazines, the stars of movies, featured on billboards.”
“My sense of fashion has developed a lot.”
“Like any other kid, I was trying so hard to fit in that school made no sense to me. I wasn’t attending class; I was trying to hang out in the caf with the cool kids. I was always trying to be cool.”
“I’m very sick of talking about my skin.”
“I try to keep my skincare routine very simple and don’t put too much on my face.”
“A lot of people ask me how I keep my skin fairly smooth and avoid breakouts, and I think that’s because I always take off my make-up before I go to bed, and I mean really take it off.”
“If I’m running around or just hanging out at home, then I barely wear any make-up.”
“I’m not a vitiligo spokesperson just because I have vitiligo.”
“I feel like I am an inspiration. That’s the word I prefer. I don’t believe that I have to be a role model, someone to be emulated.”
“The only person that can make you feel that you aren’t beautiful is you.”
“Chantelle Winnie is my birth name. Chantelle Winnie Harlow, I call her my Sasha Fierce.”
“I definitely hope and I feel that I am inspiring, but I don’t like the word ‘role model.’”
“I feel like people put too much on the title of a role model.”
“I don’t perm my hair anymore, but I’m not a natural hair expert just because it grows out of my head like that.”
“I love myself the way I am, but people will always message me about other people with vitiligo who cover their skin. ‘Winnie Harlow, you need to tell them that they need to love themselves the way they are and stop covering their skin!’ No! If that’s what makes them comfortable and what makes them happy, let them be.”
“I could more label myself as even a spokeswoman for happiness!”
“We lived on our own for a very long time, and those are my happiest years, me and my mom.”
“For me personally, I have vitiligo, so my whole career, it’s always been this very odd debate: ‘Does she want to be white? Is she white and black? Is her mum white?’ It’s always been this question of my background, my race, and what I stand for.”
“When I was young, I was picked on for something that today I feel is amazing. One thing about me connects millions of people around the world. And it’s my skin condition – vitiligo.”
“Chantelle Brown-Young is my real name. Winnie is my nickname that I was given as a teenager, and it has stuck with me. I’ve combined my real name and my nick name to create ‘Chantelle Winnie.’ My alter ego, where I seek confidence when I model, is ‘Winnie Harlow.’”
“I am not my skin. I am a model with a skin condition.”
“Kids called me a cow and mooed at me.”
“I’m happy to inspire your seven-year-old child, but I do not want to be her role model.”
“I give kudos to people like Zendaya who are like, ‘Yes, I want to inspire young kids.’ And I’m like, ‘Girl, that’s a lot of work!’”
“I more so appreciate people loving the fact that I love myself and not just glorifying my skin or me.”
“My mom will sometimes call me Winnie. It’s so annoying. I’m like, ‘Who are you talking to?’”
“If God wanted be to be black, I’d be black; if he wanted me to be white, I’d be white, so I guess He chose for me to be both and original. That’s the way I’m supposed to be.”
“My skin’s not a normal sight. When a photographer says, ‘I don’t know what it is, but that’s just not it…’ I know. They like the different colours of my skin. They’re not getting them with a particular outfit.”
“I don’t want to be put in a category.”
“I don’t think it’s good to focus on being celebrated but to celebrate yourself.”
Leave a Reply