Naomie Pilula is exactly like you.
She works five days a week, attends church on Sundays, and likes having her nails done. She enjoys fashion, as well as spending time with friends and family. Like other people, she shares these ordinary occurrences on her Instagram profile, where she uploads a few times every week.
So imagine her surprise when a simple video of one of her favorite facial masks elicited comments such as “Is this AI?” and “Is she using a filter?” Pilula eventually recognized they were referring to her physical looks, but it wasn’t until the 37-year-old shared a selfie in June that she was exposed to the depths of the internet’s cruelty.
Pilula was born and raised in Zambia, a stunning country located in the heart of southern Africa. She is the youngest of seven siblings and tells PEOPLE that her idea of beauty has evolved throughout time as a result of her life experiences.
“In Zambia, my home country, beauty is more the curvaceous woman, the well-endowed woman,” according to Pilula. “And so, [as] somebody who is smaller, I was always told, ‘Eat more, fill out more.'”
Pilula attended both the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia, and the University of Auckland in New Zealand. During her stay in Australia, she describes being the only Black person in her classes, which was a significant shift from her Zambian society and taught her another complicated lesson about desirability and beauty away from home.
She says she was teased a lot about her nose growing up. Pilula grew to love her physical characteristics in her late teens and early twenties, and they were no longer a source of concern for her.
“I am aware that one of my most contentious traits, which sparked outrage on the internet, is my nose. This is my father’s nose. Why would I want to delete a characteristic that connects me to my father? “It doesn’t make sense,” she muses.
“I won’t say that there was that one day where I woke up and I looked in the mirror and said, ‘Yes,’ but there was just one point where you looked at yourself and said, ‘I like the way I look,'” she tells me. And it was me. And after I get there, no one can take it away since they didn’t give it to me.
Pilula currently works as a lawyer in Zambia’s banking industry. She’s honed her unique style, healed past scars, and created a fulfilling life for herself. Everything was well until June, when she got a remark on one of her blogs that touched a chord.
“I got a comment that said something about trying out rhinoplasty,” she tells me. “And I think she caught me at a time where I was really pissed off, because I had received other comments and maybe even worse comments because I had people telling me outright, ‘You’re ugly,’ [and] ‘you don’t deserve to be on the internet.'”
Pilula recorded—and then removed—an apparently “passive-aggressive” reaction video, instead consulting her older sister for guidance.
“The emphasis should not be on what people say, as they will always express their opinions; instead, the focus should be on understanding why it bothers you.” She remembers her sister begging her. “Because another comment would not have. So something about this irritates you.”
Pilula recognized, after hearing her sister’s words of wisdom, “that maybe I’m not as healed as I thought I was.”
So Pilula returned to her source: God. She cites the well-known Bible verse Psalm 139:15-16 as a crucial point of learning about self and purpose.
“So that [scripture] is telling me that, look, God actually put you together,” she tells the public. “What can people say if it stems from my relationship with God and an understanding of who he is and who he has created me to be?” There is nothing you can tell me. So that’s the healing route. And I’m not sure how it can be done without God, at least permanently.”
Pilula had to stand on this concept when she tweeted a selfie with the caption “Happy Monday!” back in June. The photo spread like wildfire, garnering over 530,000 comments and shares on Instagram, most of which were nasty. Pilula claims it’s her most popular post ever, and although she considered removing it, another Bible verse kept coming back to her.
In Genesis, the prophet Joseph was sold into slavery by his siblings, who were envious of his relationship with their father, Jacob. Joseph would ultimately ascend to power, prompting his siblings to apologize.
“And Joseph says, ‘No, what the adversary planned for evil, God will turn it around for my benefit.’ So it reminds me, “Okay, look.” “If you weren’t resilient, if you didn’t love yourself as much as you do, this kind of backlash would destroy you,” Pilula says. “But then it dawned on me that the ones with the most negative feedback are also the posts with the most followers. Therefore, I believe that if the objective of this backlash was to destroy me, I will not allow that to happen.
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So, where will Pilula go from here? She tells PEOPLE that she intends to continue doing what she’s been doing: enjoying her life and perhaps inspiring others to accept their true selves.
“I genuinely want people to see God. I want others to witness my confidence. I am not an aesthetically pleasing person. “I’m not, and that’s fine,” she adds. “But I love myself, and I can be myself. And with it comes a certain amount of beauty since everyone possesses a light that deserves to shine.
“I started April with 1,000 followers. We are currently in August, and I have 20,000 followers. So when I say the past year has been wild, I mean it,” she says. “I’m not doing anything else than what I typically do. So I’m not trying to get anything; I’m simply doing what I always do on social media. I’m going to do this no matter whether you like it or not.”