Every client deserves to look and feel beautiful when they leave the salon, but for some women, their beauty regime is a daily struggle.
Jordan Bone is best known for her Youtube makeup tutorials, but there’s something her 87,700 subscribers didn’t know until recently: Bone can’t move, open or close her hands.
A car accident 10 years ago left the 25-year-old with tetraplegia—paralysis resulting in the partial or total loss of the use of limbs and torso—and confined to a wheelchair, something Bone says left her felling depressed and like she had lost herself.
“I wanted the world to still see Jordan,” she says. “When I became a tetraplegic I lost a lot and I didn’t want to lose my identity too.”
Often reduced to tears when she would attempt to do something we take for granted every day— her makeup—Bone was determined to regain her identity and feel confident again.
She spent painful months relearning her beauty skills, eventually getting so good that she launched a Youtube channel. She usually edits her popular tutorials to remove parts that show her struggling, like using her mouth to hold her brushes.
After regularly receiving negative comments asking about her hands and criticising her technique, Bone decided to show the world the truth in an unedited video showing off her skills. She has also started #mybeautifulstruggle, a social media movement encouraging other people to share the challenges they’ve overcome.
“It’s insane how much we grow with the challenges we face,” she says in the video, which has now been viewed over four million times.
“Being the girl in the wheelchair wasn’t my plan, so I didn’t want people to see just the chair. It was so hard, but the perseverance was so worth it in the end.”
“My Beautiful Struggle” by Jordan Bone
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