You’ve had things you were insecure about before. For a lot of us, it’s our acne, a double chin, eyebags, wide ears or our body weight. It’s particularly nasty when bullies come at you for it.

Who asked for their opinion anyway, right?

It’s worse when they make fun of things you can’t really change all that quickly. Making fun of someone’s haircut is one thing – at least they can just wait for their hair to grow out again. Making fun of their weight? That’s a whole different thing. I can’t just shed or gain a few dozen pounds on the spot.

A good line of advice to go by is “If they can’t change it in 10 seconds, don’t point it out“. You may remember this sentence making the rounds on Tumblr and Twitter a few years back. It’s just as valid today as it was years ago.

Unfortunately, not nearly enough people are this considerate as in the case of online bullies who went after Jessica McDaniels. Jessica bore crooked teeth and an extreme overbite since her childhood, the result of her adult teeth not setting in until she was 11.

Genetics wasn’t kind to Jessica’s teeth and jaws. It was never her fault, obviously. Corrective surgery would be remarkably, and perhaps unreasonably, expensive. It hurt when she bit down on food and she’d put up with teasing and mean comments for much of her life.

The latest form of bullying she received was also the worst. The ones that came after her now were cyberbullies, who spotted Jessica in a Facebook photo of her friends’ getting engaged

The photo in question shows us see Jessica’s friends, one on his knees proposing to someone else , with Jessica in the background recording the whole thing. Proposals are the absolute sweetest, and clearly everyone around was overjoyed.

Jessica was one of them, and naturally, she couldn’t help but smile. This was a happy moment between two of her friends. If only people saw it that way

The sight of a proposal isn’t where the attention online was centered on. Instead, people took to pointing out and mocking Jessica’s smile and teeth, which were in full view in the photo. Never mind that Jessica, who already had to live with her jaw and tooth problems, still found reasons to smile.

But despite being no stranger to mean comments, Jessica found the online bullying to be so much worse than anything she’d experienced before. They’d been going on for a month, before she told her mother about it. The news broke, and so did Jessica. She cried in the car uncontrollably.

It broke Jessica’s heart, and to make matters worse, she even blamed herself for taking attention away from her friends’ engagement.

“We all have different flaws. Mine just happens to be my teeth, but it does not define me.”

Jessica didn’t need more people to point out her teeth and overbite to her

She knew quite well what it looked like, and wanted to have them fixed for as long as she remembers. Though given how much it would cost, the possibility seemed far out of reach.

The waves of mean comments made the rounds, as did Jessica’s reaction. It reached the eyes and ears of some kinder-hearted folks too, and together they started a fundraiser to try and get Jessica the money she needed for oral-maxillary facial surgery.

To fix her jaw problems would be no easy task, though. Bone remodeling would be necessary, as well as a few other procedures that would have to go one after the other over the course of a few months. But this would be worth it in her eyes.

Turns out a fundraiser was hardly necessary

Dr. Maryann Udy, a facial surgeon specializing in just the thing she needed, was eager to help Jessica and didn’t plan on charging her anything. She had the tools, the qualifications and the expertise to help. A bit of money wasn’t on her priority list.

It wouldn’t be quick either, but neither Dr. Maryann Udy and Jessica felt any hesitation. For Jessica, this was a once in a lifetime chance to have her smile fixed. For Dr. Udy, it was an opportunity to help someone who might not find help like this anywhere else.

And so began the bone remodeling and dental implant operations. They took 2 hours, and as expected would be quite painful for a couple months. After a lot of uncomfortable operations, Jessica could now see her new smile.

And what a glow-up this is!

“I loved her” – McDaniels says about the old Jessica

And our girl shows us that she loved herself both before and after the procedure.

“I looked good before. I look even better now.”

Jessica’s glow-up is nothing short of remarkable, as is her facial surgeon’s generosity and compassion. But we should remember that not everyone can have an expert surgeon, dermatologist, or any sort of doctor show up out of nowhere to fix their problems.

While we shouldn’t need it explained to us why making fun of people’s appearances is nasty and mean, the unfortunate reality is that most adults do need this explained to them. Jessica’s glow-up is truly breathtaking and heartwarming, but it also highlights why we should consider the circumstances people are in before we think of making fun of them.

That said, her smile’s makeover is spectacular, especially since it was prompted by the attention that online bullies gave her in the first place. She was the bigger person, and now she has the smile to show for it.

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Source: [St. Louis Post Dispatch, Ryan Sean KDSK, STL Today]