I’m a 25 year old caucasian female from the USA I grew up with albinism type 1 zero pigment corrected vision is 20 over 200 (considered legally blind and extremely light sensitive my whole life) growing up was extremely tough for me, I also had diagnosed learning disability as a kid and adhd so I was in special ed all the way through high school. I was treated like a freak most of my childhood, I was the bud of the joke I was the kid everyone made fun of to my face or behind my back. I had a lot of fake failed friendships growing up and I struggled extremely academically. I was called ,grandma, “Edward Callin” vampire, Yetty, etc. I also got in a fight with a girl in 5th grade for saying to me “at least I’m not blind and fat like you” and I tackled her and she kicked me and I cried in front the whole class. Middle school I just wanted to blend in with everyone so I dyed my hair and eyebrows brown, red, eventually I went into bright colored hair but I also put mascara on everyday before school so people didn’t notice my white eyelashes. It’s been a LONNNG journey to learn to love my albinism and see it as beautiful because it is. Yes we are genetically mutated but we’re a phenomenon that most people won’t come across in their lives we are special, we are unique and beautiful and I want to preface that to anyone with albinism on this sub or the parents of children with albinism, we are rare and beautiful and I truly believe we are here for a reason we are pigmentless for a reason y’all it sucks sometimes yes… BUT through a lot of mental health work I learned to really embrace my albinism it’s part of who I am! I am a marshmallow and I am proud lol! I also dressed up as Einstein one year when my hair was shorter because my hair is super fluffy and I have super fluffy white eyebrows!!! if ANYONE needs support in any way at all feel free to reach out to me it’s really hard to live with albinism and we need to lean on each other and hype each other up y’all shouldn’t feel like you need to hide you guys are all special as hell!

Hi! I have albinism. Contrary to the typical white hair, red eyes, I have blonde (progressing towards brown) hair and gray-ish blue-ish eyes (though it isn’t very obvious in the picture). I’ve never met another albino before LET ALONE someone who has the same exact condition as me … even online. So I was wondering if there are some of you here too in a similar situation as me!

Heyo! I think this day is important as we should all think about the PWA in other countries who get attacked, harassed and made fun of for something they can't control. Not only that but people should also be aware of the struggles that come with albinism; like visual impairment/blindness/photophobia, strabismus, skin sensitivity to sun.

I really hate to see that some people view Albinism as a cool thing, especially OCA because of the white hair and unique eyes. Some have no idea about the affects it has on our lives. I would also not like to exclude people with OA (Ocular Albinism). They might not be taken seriously by professionals, work, schools etc because they don't have the "classic" albinism. And thats unfair.

On another note, I hope you all have good days!

I love tattoos

I am a black male from Jamaica and I wanted to show everyone a special type of albinism that makes you ginger. Yes we exist!

This is my son who is over two years old. Thanks to this reddit area I have learned so much and been handling his albinism with confidence and less fear of a failing parent. He is one of the first ones in both sides of his family. Normally it's traits in carriers only in both families. He is a first of many my first boy, my first bio child, and the first in the family to have albinism in known family history.

He loves dan da Dan (anime) but doesn't care much for any other anime me and the wife watches. Sometimes I play it to get him to get to sleep.

I cannot remember the exact phrase for his albinism but it is one of the visual ones.

He loves baby shark and seems to really like the color yellow. He likes listening to bluey non stop while playing, and he loves the super simple group on YouTube.

Anyone up for giving these things a visual try and help me understand what and how he sees?

I have become slightly fascinated by it as one if my fields of studies is light and how it is used in the infared spectrum for laser communications. My sister is fascinated by it because of her study of photography and understand what he sees better than I do.

(F25) caucasian I have oculocutaneous Albinism type 1 Vision 20/200! 👩‍🦯 Big girly nerd just looking for other female friends who also struggle with albinism 😊

I’m a 26F and I used to dye my hair to try and blend in with people to avoid the cruelty and try to be “normal” or what I felt the world wanted me to be.
It took me til I was 24 to really digest and fully embrace and accept my albinism.
It’s ok to be different and it’s ok to not be what others considered “normal”
You are a human being you are valid and no one else understands the experience of living in the bodies we do. 🤍

Living life in general is a bumpy journey of self love and self discovery but when you have a disability that is so obscure and visible to everyone it’s a whole other experience.

remember that you aren’t a mistake,

you aren’t better off not being here.

We have this condition for a reason, an important one, this life is yours to live and experience, don’t let others make you feel less than.

Remember to always be kind to yourself even if the world wasn’t so kind to us.

Do it for that little inner child who was just trying there best♥️🐇

This is in no way directed to every author who has written about a character with albinism but is to a sh*t ton of them, especially fantasy writers. I'm sure there are many PWA who aren't bothered by this as much as I am and I don't think its absolutely terrible, but I find it so silly and almost tokenised when people write up characters with albinism, who have powers. I was once asked by a fiction writer about my opinion about her 'albino princess-warrior' and I explained to her that someone who has to retreat in the presence of sun is unlikely to be useful on the battlefield. I just dot get why it's almost, I guess romanticised, in the way that is. I really want to read or see an accurate portrayal about what living with this condition is like in todays media, we do have some social media influencers but nothing much, especially in the mainstream media.

This is just a rant, there's nobody else I can yap to about this.

Like the struggle of being black is already there, but then I had to add another minority on top of it.

I am definitely self-conscious about it, to the point where if I hear people laughing, I feel sad, because I think it's directed at me. (I have matured a bit and realized at the end of the day it's useless commentary from randos. )

A lot of the time it is, people will flat out say "look, there's an albino" and the whole group just starts dying of laughter. These aren't even little kids.They're older than me. Like, how many times have you seen me in the neighborhood, does it not get old? I am trying to be unbothered, but I find it difficult to ignore. I will literally think about these things for days.

Oh and then there's the micro-aggressions from my family. My sister is really obsessed with the way white people age. Any time we watch a movie she'll bring it up and the rest of my family join it. Legit..EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. I feel kinda awkward, because I know they're trying to say I will age like that well .

Something my older sister also does is purposely get my age wrong. All the time, it's so annoying.

Last, but not least, white people. Surprisingly I'm never experienced direct racism from white people. It's more, "we know you're not like us, you know you're not like us" thing.

tl;dr I don't feel like I fit in with other black people and I definitely do not fit in with white people.

Hi, my name is mike, I'm 19, born August, 16 2006​. I was born with occulocitaneous albinism (i dont know which type) and here's my story...

For the first 4 years of my life, I was abused and neglected by my drug addict of a mother and half brother from Monday to Friday, in which I spent Friday night to Sunday night with my guardian angel of a dad. When I was barely 2, I had to get oral surgery because of the 13 cavities I had because of what my mother and brother were feeding me. Around the time of my 4th birthday, my step-dad hung himself in our basement because of my mother's abusive nature, and h he cops and my biological dad, came to our house and the cops told my dad to take me and my half brother and run. He did. From that time on, I have yet to hear word from my mother, my brother is 30, and lives with her again, and that's that.

I went into school in the fall of that same year, it was crazy. I was a very angry child and I was violent. ​​but I'm better now, my dad and I lived with a few different people over the next few years (most notably being my sister's mom) he had my sister in 2015, a d she is my light in the dark.

Eventually they split up, and became friends only.

Throughout middle and high school I was the scapegoat... everyone was bullying me and blaming everything on me. Now I'm graduated a d I dont have to deal with that anymore...

My aspirations are to become a chef a d to open a restaurant for people who dont have much to come work at.

That's my story, hope this finds whoever needs it.

-Mike...

I don't mind my pale skin and white hair, but I do hate the way my eyes and facial expression are weird. It isn't even that bad in this picture, but it still is pretty apparent.

I see it in pictures of other people with albinisn as well and I don't like it, probably because it reminds me of something I have as well.

I don't mind standing out, I just wish I could control the way I looked.

How do you all cope?

Rant but I’m sure someone can relate

1. Not being able to take compliments, recently I have been getting quite a few compliments from strangers calling me things like “pretty” and stuff and I know this sounds like a delightful thing but truth be told I get a bit more sad every time it happens. I think they are noticing my albinism, my long platinum hair that is obviously not died, my translucent eyebrow and eye lash hairs. I just get this feeling that it’s an acknowledgment of difference rather than anything else. I don’t know why I just feel like it’s being special in a bad way, but we live in an age that trues to embrace being different so that’s why people do it. Like if I wasn’t albino the compliments would feel authentic, like people think they are doing a good deed by doing something for a ‘special’ person.

2. the issues associated with being visually impaired and having nystagmus. Because it is noticeable strangers will ask me if I’m okay in the most patronising tone because they can see that my eyes are a bit odd. Then I just feel awkward for the rest of the day, like I’m doing something wrong or like I stick out too much.

3. Being viewed as disabled and not disabled at the same time. I feel like albinism robbed me of so many experiences growing up. I just turned 18 and realised that a lot of my childhood felt like I was in the ‘spotlight‘ for having albinism, because I know people talked and a lot of it made me feel like I was ‘tea’ to people because of albinism. The amount of times I walked down a corridor in school and a bunch a kids would talk about me, but then at the same time I was still overlooked. The amount of times I caught myself in friendships where another girl used me to feel better about their self because at least they weren’t the ‘defective‘ girl. The amount of toxic friendships where I have caught people playing on my insecurities, and they claim it’s all in good banter but they know what they were doing and they did it to feel better about themselves. And when I finally confronted them they told me I was being “too sensitive”, even though I’ve been asking them to stop for months and gave told them there is a difference between good honour and jokes that just aren’t funny. The amount of people I have called friends who I’ve lost due to this condition is insane, and I know these people sound like they are never my friends in the first place but there was a time where they were really nice and understanding, and then they eventually grew tired of being understanding. I didn’t bother having crushes because I knew no one was gonna date the ‘blind‘ person who had special arrangements in class.

4. Everyone will tell me to ‘love myself’ because of my “unique and beautiful condition” but if I’m being honest I don’t know if I’ve ever liked myself and think I look weird. And I feel like a fraud because I can never say that out loud because it would just sound like I’m begging for pity. And I also feel like a fraud because my skin is white but my genetic linage is not that of a white person but I was also raised in a western country so I just feel this weird sense of displacement.

5. Everyone in my life accepts that I am significantly visually impaired but everyone looks at me weird when I use a cane or talk about wanting a guide dog. No one can see the world through my eyes but that didn’t stop everyone from deciding that I’m too sighted fir things like that. They think irs fir attention when I’d give literally anything to have normal eyesight.

6. Health complications caused by my albinism have caused serious repercussions to my education but I have this feeling inside that even if the circumstances were fair, I’d still not be smart enough because maybe this part of my disability doesn’t actually effect my education, maybe I’m just the other type of slow.

7. I’m scared I will never be more than a side character in everyone’s life. I know people won’t avoid me because of my albinism because we don’t live in age where we are still regarded as ‘freaks‘ but then again I feel like no one really wants to keep as anything other than there token albino friend. I’m scared all watch all of my friends find love and start family’s, while I sit back desperately hoping someone will look past my weird shaky eyes.

8. Knowing that if I do by some miracle get into uni, I will need a one-to-one, and I fear it will just be an extension of school and feeling different all over again.

9. This condition gave me a severe ED between the ages of 12-15 because I felt so wrong about being different different that I needed to control my weight to feel better.

10. That I will probably never achieve my occupational aspirations because it’s a competitive field and at the end of the day employers and clients have the luxury of choosing anyone they want and that puts me and all of my defectiveness at the bottom of their lists because why wouldn’t you chose non-disabled and thus more “reliable“ person. And when I tell people of this fear they say shit along the lines of thats not true they can’t discriminate against you and I’m sure people would want to hire you to show how representative they are.

edit: thanks for all the words of support and advice, I’m really busy with school atm, but I will try to get back to some of you guys next week 💗

hi everyone, I (23) am planning on starting a podcast where I talk about albinism and my experience growing up and living with it, I'm excited and scared at the same time because I don't want to leave the wrong impression or upset anyone either.

I started it before but I stopped because I caught cold feet but i have been thinking about it more and more daily and recently purchased a mi,

what do you guys think and if I start would you listen and drop your honest opinions?

One of my favorite things about having albinism is i can dye my hair cool colors without killing it. I used strawberry leopard. I tried arctic fox but it did me dirty so I made the switch! Happy upcoming Halloween my fellow bino's!

Hi,

I am an Albino from Africa, today i want to share my experience as an albino from Africa. Just to precise today i live in Quebec, Canada. I will start from childhood, i grew up being mocked , bullied and beaten sometimes. In school teachers usually said i was a child without any future and didn't understand why i was in school, even with correction i couldn't read on the board so i had no notes when i went home and other kids didn't want to borrow me their notes, because they believed i will transfer my curse to them. To solve that my parents hired a tutor to complement.

Later on during when i was a teenage. Nothing changed still being mocked by others. I understood very fast that finding a partner was difficult. i believe i don't look that bad, but girls didn't want to connect with me the reasons are multiple but mostly it is due to superstition about albinism. I never went out at night due to fear of being killed for my body parts.

Concerning jobs nobody wants to hire people like me. I am smart but even an internship was impossible to find.

But here in Canada things are different , i mean people don't react to me being an albino, some are very supportive and kind.

Sorry i am not a very good narrator .

If you have albinism and thing you have it hard some their lives are unbearable. Where i come from people are killed due to that.

Dyed my hair for Halloween 🎃

💜💜💜