In a YouTube video posted yesterday, Dutch YouTube star NikkieTutorials came out as transgender in a video entitled “I’m Coming Out.” NikkieTutorials (Nikkie de Jager) has 12.7 million subscribers, and generally makes makeup tutorials.
In the seventeen minute long video, De Jager said that telling her audience that she was a trans woman was “scary but liberating”. She has had her channel for over eleven years, and says she had always intended to tell her audience- though not necessarily at the time she did. Towards the end of the video, De Jager revealed that she had been blackmailed by people who had found out that she was transgender. It was this that forced her to make the video when she did.
One of the things De Jager emphasised most in her video was that she did not want her audience to think of her differently: “I am me. We don’t need labels,” she says. She expressed anxiousness about the reaction of her audience, saying that she did not know how they would respond- the only thing she knew was that she had not changed.
Apart from being a huge moment for De Jager herself, the video also does important work in highlighting aspects of being transgender that many cisgender people might not consider. She describes the pain of having to tell new people in her life about “a part of your life that you hate” and the inherent danger of dating as a trans woman. De Jager also gives particular praise to her mother and her teachers in school, who supported her gender expression and transition wholeheartedly.
From the comments section of her YouTube video, it seems that her audience has reacted well to De Jager’s decision to come out. It has also been received positively by Dutch media, such as NOS and thebestsocial.media.
Feature image: NikkieTutorials/YouTube.Â