Demi Sims has embraced her vitiligo.
Demi Sims has embraced her vitiligo
The 26-year-old star was diagnosed with the skin condition when she was 16 but has now decided to bare all and revealed that she hopes to help others with the disease that causes the loss of skin colour in patches.
Demi told New! magazine: "I want everyone who has vitiligo to feel comfortable. I wanted to do it because I wanted to feel proud of myself and I wanted to make other people who have vitiligo feel proud, too.
"There's nothing worse than getting messages on social media from people asking me how I cover it up. I want people to embrace it and be happy in their skin."
Demi – who quit 'The Only Way Is Essex' earlier this year to star in the OnlyFans TV series 'House of Sims' – revealed that she was "devastated" when she was diagnosed as a teenager and went to extreme lengths to hide the condition.
She said: "I've had it since I was 16 and I hated it until I was about 20. I thought it was devastating when I first got it. It was a tough time.
"I covered up for years. I used to buy a product from America called Dermablend, a thick body make-up made especially for skin conditions. It really did help with my confidence at the time."
Demi confessed that she would find it exhausting trying to cover up the condition all the time by editing photos.
She recalled: "It used to take me hours to cover it with make-up. I even wore it on holiday.
"And then I started using social media and I would edit it out on my pictures. I'd spend hours editing and think, 'Wow, I'd feel so much more confident if that's what my body actually looked like. Why can't it be like that forever?'
"Whereas now, I just feel much more confident and I'd actually rather people notice it."