Briel Adams-Wheatley, a transgender social media beauty influencer born with no limbs, spoke directly on Tuesday to trolls who like to mock her online: They can try and bring her down, but they’re helping raise her views — and her bank account!
Adams-Wheatley spoke with award-winning daytime talk show journalist Tamron Hall this week and admitted, “Two years ago, I would’ve been sobbing in my bathroom about comments that would be left on my page. [But] now where I’m like, ‘Wait, no. They’re coming back and they keep coming back. They’re fans, and it’s cute, and they’re paying my bills.’ So I love that for me.”
Related
The audience applauded and Hall laughed in amazement at her response.
“We live in a day and age when people can say anything they want behind a screen, but little do they know the effect is takes on the other person behind the screen,” she said.
Never Miss a Beat
Subscribe to our newsletter to stay ahead of the latest LGBTQ+ political news and insights.
“Maybe [my haters are] hurt. Maybe something happened to them. Maybe they just don’t understand or are trying to be funny,” she said. “If that’s what my page needs to be for them to take it out on, then go for it, because my bank account is succeeding, so thank you.”
Adams-Wheatley was born in São Paulo, Brazil, without limbs due to Hanhart Syndrome, a rare congenital disorder that causes underdeveloped limb growth in the womb. The condition is so rare that only about 30 medically confirmed cases of it have been formally reported in medical literature between 1932 and 1991.
Unable to financially support her, her mother put her up for adoption as an infant. At only 9 months old, Mormon parents from Utah adopted her as a child in a family with 14 siblings. Her parents raised her to be independent, and she eventually learned to walk and dance using mobility aids.
In her beauty videos, she applies makeup in her videos by using her mouth to apply color onto brushes and using her shoulder against table edges to apply and blend cosmetics onto her face.
She met her husband Adam in 2020, married him in 2021, and attended a Pride celebration at the White House in June 2022 in recognition of her advocacy as a queer creator with disabilities. She publicly came out as transgender in early 2023, and said she had told her husband before they got married.
She currently has over 5.4 million TikTok followers, 1.3 million Instagram followers, and 1.32 million YouTube subscribers.
Subscribe to the LGBTQ Nation newsletter and be the first to know about the latest headlines shaping LGBTQ+ communities worldwide.