McDaniels is a hairstylist in St. Louis and her traumatic incident took place in 2017. She had been mocked for her misshaped teeth since high school, but it was nothing like what she experienced once she was cyber-bullied.
A Facebook post on May was meant to capture a proposal – a happy moment. McDaniels was in the background snapping her own photo. But a bystander decided to scroll in on her face, crop it, and put it online for the sole purpose of calling her names and encouraging others to do the same.
She woke up one morning to find she was tagged in a photo that would devastate and humiliate her. And the post went viral, with people comparing her to a donkey, showing just how awful people can be when hiding behind a computer screen.
Cowards.
Not long after, an old friend of McDaniels’ from high school, Krystal Starks, saw the photo as well as the tens of thousands of shares and cruel comments.
“For a person doing something innocent, for them to be caught off-guard and taken advantage of like this is horrible,” Starks told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. And, “For what? For likes on Facebook?”
McDaniels had tried to get her teeth fixed before, but a dentist told her it would cost upwards of $3,000 and they didn’t offer a payment plan. It was more than the single mother could afford.
But she didn’t feel like she owed a bunch of strangers that explanation.
“I accept me for who I am,” McDaniels said. “Ain’t no one going to break me down.”
While the was in the limelight in all the wrong ways, she even decided to do something productive and began featuring photos of the work she had done as a hairdresser online.
She also phoned her friend whose proposal was the real subject of the photo and apologized for taking the attention off of her – an unnecessary gesture that shows just what a compassionate and strong person she really is.
Eventually, Starks got in touch with McDaniels and asked for permission to start a GoFundMe to raise money for the dental work. It raised nearly $9,500.
“I can’t just be another citizen on the sidelines, just watching,” Starks said.
When her story ran in the Post-Dispatch, local dentists contacted her with offers to help her for free. Eventually, McDaniels chose Dr. Maryann Udy of Northwest Oral Maxillo-Facial Surgeons. But it was going to take many months and multiple procedures.
On the day of the first surgery she was terrified – and it wasn’t until then that she even had the courage to tell her mother she had been bullied throughout her life for her teeth.
Her family stood behind her and her two grandmothers, her mom, her aunt, and a few friends all sat in the waiting room in support.
It would take weeks for the swelling to go down before she could have yet more surgery, but already there was a noticeable difference.
Jessica McDaniels misses her old self, but these days she’s smiling for a whole new reason as her teeth look better and better.
“I looked good before,” she said. “I look even better now.”