A woman who went viral after sharing her facial birthmark has said she’s turned down an offer to appear on The Undateables.
Lexxie Harford, went viral back in 2015 after she shared a make-up-free and unedited selfie showing off her birthmark on Imgur and racked up more than 100,000 likes.
Not only that, she was met with an influx of emails from interested men - with one bloke even offering to build her a house. Quite the chat up line.
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She claims she was offered the chance to go on The Undateables and was told by others that she should apply for Too Ugly For Love.
Lexxie said: "I posted some selfies on Imgur and didn’t realise it was public.
“I refreshed the page 10 minutes later and it had 100 comments. By the end of the night, I had been contacted by an American paper asking if they could write about me.
“I agreed thinking it would raise awareness, and then off the back of that loads of people reached out to me - it went viral before going viral was really a thing.
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“For someone who might be more sensitive, I can only imagine what it might have done to them."
Eight years on from her viral fame, Lexxie says she has mixed feelings about her experiences.
On the one hand, Lexxie says she gained confidence from the experience and also thinks it may have helped bring about wider acceptance of facial irregularities.
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However, she was also met with some uncomfortable attention from men.
She said: "I got so many emails from men. One guy said he was married but wanted to be ‘more than friends’ and another offered to build me a house.
“I remember thinking, 'This is bananas'. So many people reached out to me saying, ‘I have this too and I’m not going to wear makeup now’.
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"I’ve always been okay with how my face looks. I’m not self-conscious of my face, but I’ve had a lot of people reach out to me who have found confidence because of the story going viral."
Lexxie went on: “Some people were saying ‘I love how you look’ and other people were saying, ‘So you want to be on Too Ugly For Love?’
“Another one that reached out was The Undateables - I think they both try to hide what they actually are but really it was just about saying ‘these people are ugly in our eyes’."
Claire Reid