She’s back with a mission.
As you might remember Fifth Harmony‘s Normani Kordei decided to quit Twitter in August after writing a statement addressed to her fans about how she was being “racially cyber bullied with tweets and pictures so horrific and racially charged.”
Later, the 20-year-old rejoined social media by announcing she’s teamed up with Cybersmile to put an end to cyber bullying once and for all. Good on ya!
In an interview conducted last month but published on Wednesday, the singer told Us Weekly of the experience:
“Everybody in the group gets online hate, but mine is different. Racism really does exist and I’m the only African American girl of the group. There are people creating Photoshopped pictures of me getting beat as if I were a slave back in the day.”
Disgusting.
Related: Simon Cowell Sounds Off On The Fate Of Fifth Harmony!
She continued:
“I tried to ignore it at first. My way of dealing with it was to not deal with it, if that makes sense. I thought the best thing was just not to look at the comments. Even if there’s one comment, it’s superhurtful and it’s the one that sticks with you.”
The ATL native admitted that removing herself from the negativity was a freeing experience:
“I felt like a weight had been lifted. And I got so much love. Keke Palmer, Zendaya, a bunch of my friends ├óΓé¼ΓÇ¥ they were all texting me, making sure that I was OK and giving me advice. It really did open my eyes to see that people do genuinely care about me. I don’t know how many times I heard, “Normani, I’m here to support you.” They came to our shows and made signs. The whole stadium was filled with posters saying, “Normani, we love you!” Once Twitter was gone, I felt a lot more present, not always looking to see what people were saying about me. It was a relief.”
But ultimately, N.K. decided to return in order to make a difference:
“[I came back] to turn the situation around and make it positive. I feel like it’s almost my purpose to speak up about my experience so it could help somebody else. The hate is not going to stop, but I needed to make a point that you can’t run away from a bully. You can’t allow someone’s hate to dictate your life. I want to be the voice for those people who are going through the same thing, like little African American boys and girls getting bullied at school. It wasn’t just, I’m going to get back in to tweet ‘I had a burger today.'”
The Worth It songstress defined her mission as:
“We created a hashtag, #ImACybersmiler, and you can make videos and share your stories to show people that you’re not alone, and we can support one another. Knowing that you’re not alone really does make all the difference in the world. I never, ever want to go back to that other place again where I worry about those ugly comments and people who hate. I’m just going to be me.”
Loves it! Do you, bb!
[Image via Instagram.]
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