NikkieTutorials comes out as transgender in new video

Popular beauty YouTuber Nikkie de Jager, known as NikkieTutorials, has come out as transgender in a new video.

On Monday, the beauty blogger announced that she felt she had been forced to reveal she was transgender after being blackmailed.

“I wanted to start the year off by finally revealing a part of my life that has made me who I am,” de Jager says in the video titled: "I'm Coming Out". “I can’t believe I’m saying this today, to all of you, for the entire world to see, but damn it feels good to finally do it. It’s time to let go and be truly free.

“When I was younger I was born in the wrong body, which means that I am transgender.”

In the YouTube video, the 25-year-old revealed that by sharing her personal story, she was “taking back my own power”.

“Today I’m sharing something with you that I’ve always wanted to share, one day, but under my own circumstances,” she said. “And it looks like that chance has been taken away from me. So I’m taking back my own power.”

According to de Jager, blackmailers have threatened to leak her story to the press - an invasion of privacy that she called “vile and gross”.

“They said they wanted to leak it because I’m lying, or that I don’t want to tell my truth or because I’m too scared for people to know who I truly am,” the YouTuber told viewers. “I’m not scared. Today’s the day I am free and I get to be me finally.”

During the video, de Jager recalled her transition, as well as when she knew that she was meant to be a girl.

According to the blogger, when her mother was pregnant with her, she was so “convinced” that she was having a girl that she didn’t bother doing scans to check the sex.

“She was convinced that she was going to have a girl and out came me,” de Jager said. “It was a surprise to my mum and a surprise to me as soon as I had brains to think with.”

When de Jager was six, she began transitioning to a girl with the help of her mum.

“By the age of six I grew my hair out, people at my school knew and I think by the age of seven/eight I fully wore girls clothes only and the teachers were so supportive about it,” the blogger recalled.

According to de Jager, she fully transitioned at 19, after taking hormones and growth stoppers at 14.

The makeup artist, who has more than 12.5m YouTube subscribers, also took the opportunity to tell her followers that this “doesn’t change anything about me” and that her love for makeup has always been “real”.

In response to the video, which has already been viewed more than 455,000 times, hundreds of people have expressed their support for the beauty blogger.

“Congratulations to Nikkie for coming out, I’m so deeply proud of her for being able to take her own narrative back for herself and be free, what a beautiful legend,” one person tweeted.

Another said: “Whoever blackmailed Nikkie made the fatal error of underestimating the power of a fearless, proud, unapologetic female. Can’t prey on shame if it doesn’t exist.”