YouTuber NikkieTutorials Opens Up About Her Journey To Coming Out

Coming out can stir up a mix of feelings — especially when you come out to millions of people at once. But that's exactly what YouTube makeup guru Nikkie de Jager, aka NikkieTutorials, did when she uploaded a video on Jan. 13 called "I'm Coming Out." to her YouTube channel. Since then, the video has been watched over 32 million times, and on Jan. 22, the YouTuber appeared on The Ellen DeGeneres Show to give her first interview since coming out as transgender. NikkieTutorials' quotes about coming out show so much strength, and I'm glad Nikkie convinced me to start wearing waterproof mascara, because things got emotional.

At the start of the Jan. 13 video, Nikkie revealed that — while she had always wanted to come out — someone was threatening to leak the story to the press, which took away her chance to come out on her own terms. "A couple of weeks ago, I got emails from a certain person, and he was not OK with the fact that I was lying and wanted to expose that," Nikkie explained to Ellen during her Jan. 22 appearance, later adding, "I feel like his entire goal was, with this, to destroy my life."

But as Nikkie pointed out, he didn't destroy her life. With the support of her fiancé, Dylan (to whom she's been engaged since August 2019), she posted the video, and according to her, the response she's received ever since has been "unreal." Though her coming out hadn't happened exactly the way she wanted, Nikkie still expressed relief that she had shared her gender identity with her followers. "There's never the perfect timing," she said. "So, in a way, because I'm not thankful to the person who did this, I am thankful that it happened now."

When Ellen asked Nikkie when she first knew she'd been born in the wrong body, the YouTuber explained that she had always felt confused. "I was like, 'Why do I have to wear that, or why don't I have long hair?'" she said. Fortunately, Nikkie's mom always gave her the freedom to express herself, even when doctors advised her mom not to "push it too far." As Nikkie recounted, "She was like, 'If you want to wear girl clothes, you're going to wear them' — even though doctors were like, 'You might want to wait with that a bit.'"

Towards the end of the interview, Nikkie expressed hope that her coming out might inspire others. "As long as I get to be myself and inspire little Nikkies to be theirselves, that's all I can do," she said. With her wise words and always-on-fleek brows, NikkieTutorials is a true beauty queen inside and out.