“I especially love beauty influencers like Lindsey from linsmakeuplooks, Alix Earle and Meredith Duxbury. They are some of my biggest inspirations. I credit them for giving me the courage to start my account,” Martin tells PEOPLE exclusively.
But when viewers noticed one of her legs was smaller than the other and discolored, Martin started filming her reactions and explanations, jokingly calling her affected limb"stickie" and “my poopy leg.”
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“Giant congenital melanocytic nevus…occurs in around every 50-250k births,” Martin tells PEOPLE. “It is an overgrowth of cells that can occur anywhere on the body and can cause some health concerns, especially if a nevus is formed on the brain or the spine.”
Ansley Martin/Tiktok
The rarity of Martin’s condition — plus her frank take on it — caused her to go viral seemingly overnight.
Martin now has more than 480k followers, and her content — which includes get-ready-with-me beauty videos as well as humorous clips about her condition and reactions to it — has more than 16 million likes. But the teen says she has “definitely not” always been so funny.
Martin called her affected leg “stickie” in one viral TikTok.Ansley Martin/Tiktok
“I used to get really, really angry when people would ask me questions, but now I understand that most people are genuinely curious and not trying to insult me,” she tells PEOPLE. “Even now I do get some really annoying questions, so sometimes I get a little ticked off. The most annoying question I’ve ever gotten was probably someone asking me how many fires I was in.”
“Most of the time I just say I have a skin condition. Other times I make up crazy stories.”
These days Martin takes the questions in stride. “I think that as I’ve gotten older and had more experiences, my humor has grown with me. Especially because of my skin condition,” she says. “I have an abnormal amount of negative interactions with people so I find a lot of times I can pull a lot of jokes from that. I’m really happy that I’ve found new people to tell them to, because I think my friends were getting sick of them.”
And while her condition is now “just something that affects my confidence from time to time,” that wasn’t always the case.
These days, Martin says her condition only affects her “confidence” — but she did undergo surgeries as an infant.Courtesy Ansley Martin
Courtesy Ansley Martin
“As an infant, I had six surgeries to help prevent any unwanted cell growth,” she tells PEOPLE. ”That had the most impact because I wasn’t able to crawl because of the cast I had to wear, so instead of crawling I would just drag my leg behind me. Kind of like a rudder!”
And as theMayo Clinicpoints out, children with the condition are at an increased risk of developing skin cancer as adults.
That “worry of developing melanoma” is the biggest concern for Martin, who enjoys playing soccer, painting, and studying French and history in school.
As for her viral fame, the teen says she and her family are “all slowly learning how to maneuver this together. We’re all really excited and optimistic about this amazing opportunity.”
source: people.com
