BASHIR AZIZ: When it comes to Instagram comments, I do get good ones and I do get bad ones. "Yeah,
you literally look like artwork" or, "What colour is your private part?"
BASHIR AZIZ: People ask all sorts of questions, like, is it a burn? Is it a birthmark?
Is it, what happened, simply. Is it skin cancer? Some people just want to know, some people
just literally, just curious. It’s not out of like, say being rude. I just know that
it’s a different colour on my skin.
BASHIR AZIZ: It’s not contagious. You won’t catch any illness from it. It doesn’t affect your health.
COMM: 23-year-old Bashir was born with a condition called vitiligo - which causes the skin to
lose pigment and colour.
BASHIR AZIZ: On my skin myself as you can see, it’s affected me down the middle
and in my hair as well. It can affect your hair or some people don’t know that it
can affect your hair but it can.
BASHIR AZIZ: There were treatments that they gave me for vitiligo because I did go to dermatologists
for a long time. One guy was literally, "Okay, well because it’s quite extensive
why don’t you go white?" I mean if like, what the hell? Like, are you serious? Trying
to tell me to change race, literally trying to tell me to change my identity and that’s
dead. So I’d rather - if anything - represent both races.
COMM: As there is no known cure for vitiligo, looking different is all Bashir has ever known.
COMM: But over the years he has noticed a change in his skin.
BASHIR AZIZ: So I was born with vitiligo. Like I said 80% of my body, but now my skin
pigments over the years have just come back to life. So it’s like say, I don’t know
50% now or 40% even. I’m happy that basically, it’s doing the work that it is supposed
to do biologically, but at the same time, I’m unhappy that like, like I’m even not
special no more, yeah.
BASHIR AZIZ: It’s a bit of a mad thing, I’m not going to lie to you. This is when
I was like I don’t even know, nursery? And you could see how wide it is there in it,
like you could see my vitiligo literally, it touches from eyebrow to eyebrow at the beginning.
BASHIR AZIZ: Alright it still does, but like, as you, I don’t know if you can zoom in
but like, you can see like the bridge almost as to like where it’s filled up over the
years. I feel two ways about it: I feel happy, I feel happy that, I see, I don’t, I don’t
know. I feel unhappy.
BASHIR AZIZ: This is another picture, these ones kind of get to me. My mum, she used to
like go to doctors and they used to give like a makeup thing.
BASHIR AZIZ: I got like majority of these look: makeup, makeup, makeup, makeup. I don’t
know if it was for my sake or it was for her sake but like, she just did it anyway just
to cover it up, just to make, I don’t know, the staring less, to fit into the crowd, I
guess? To, I don’t know, less pressure on me and her maybe. You never know how it is.
Like I did wear a lot of makeup. Here I am chilling - look
swag from early, yeah? Brown face makeup.
BASHIR AZIZ: From my young age, I didn’t want to cover up my skin. But I also did feel
uncomfortable about, like I said the way people look at me and stuff like that.
BASHIR AZIZ: I was bullied for a bit. People would call me like say, a cow or zebra. It
did have an impact on me with all that name calling because it would affect anybody’s
confidence just as bullying does. When I got older, it affected me in like loads of different
ways: getting girlfriends, socialising, talking, opening up. Just doing new activities that
required me to show my skin like swimming, etc.
COMM: But as Bashir got older, he started to think differently about his appearance.
BASHIR AZIZ: But you have to be yourself, you have to love yourself and in that way
people just love you.
BASHIR AZIZ: When you don’t love yourself, how the hell do you expect other people to love you?
BASHIR AZIZ: If I was to continue with that attitude like, ‘Oh, I hate the fact that
I’m alive, I hate the fact that I’m short, I hate the fact that I’ve got two colour
skin,’ and all of this, all of this, all of this and whatever that excuse may be like,
if I was to carry on like that, I would not be as happy as I am.
COMM: A big turning point came when Bashir
took his look onto social media. Instead of shying away from people, he became proud of
his unique look and now enjoys showing off and celebrating his skin.
BASHIR AZIZ: Vitiligo has improved my life in a mad way. I do think I’m both an artist
and a piece of art. A lot of people see my work and recognise it and now they just
like alright cool. Social media certainly helped me love myself because you upload a
picture on Instagram and then like we leave it alone and then like two hours later, you
come back to like 30 comments and 50 likes and you just like, all this love of this one
photo. That’s encouraging me to do more and more artwork or more of this or more like
this or it has made me feel better as a person so maybe I can actually talk to this girl
because, do you know what I mean like, whatever works. But, yeah, it definitely works.
BASHIR AZIZ: Obviously when I was younger, I did wish that it would fade away. And I
don’t mean going, I mean going, yeah, so.
BASHIR AZIZ: But as I get older, I literally appreciate every individual thing and not
even just about myself, about every other person as well. Everyone that decides
to showcase their uniqueness.
RUDY SAYEGH: Well, I would say what Bashir looked at once as a disadvantage in his life
is going to end up being his biggest tool.
BASHIR AZIZ: My final conclusion about it is that I wish that it just literally stays
the way it is. I even notice these spots coming back here, here, here, here.
BASHIR AZIZ: I have a feeling in 10 years, you’ll see a different pattern.
Hopefully it’s still as nice as this one.