Growing up in the greater Toronto area, I was a happy kid. I was my mother's first child, surrounded by admiring godparents and cousins.
Like any other kid, I was trying so hard to fit in that school made no sense to me. I wasn't attending class; I was trying to hang out in the caf with the cool kids. I was always trying to be cool.
I think we need to take a step back and realize what the real issues are - it's not being from different places or being different.
Vitiligo is just another difference, like freckles, big hair, tiny ears Everyone has differences.
I want to see different faces on the covers of magazines, the stars of movies, featured on billboards.
There wasn't anyone who was specifically taking me under their wing. I definitely looked up to people, though, one major person being Naomi Campbell, of course. That's, like, a given.
My skin's not a normal sight. When a photographer says, 'I don't know what it is, but that's just not it...' I know. They like the different colours of my skin. They're not getting them with a particular outfit.
With my skin, I have to avoid direct contact with the sun, so that, combined with my mom being conservative, meant I grew up wearing stockings under shorts and long sleeves under tank tops. It was kind of embedded in me that I was supposed to be covering up.
I loved reading magazines about the entertainment world.
I discovered that I was 'different' in the third grade. As the new kid at school, I was trying hard to find my footing. I thought I had made friends with a couple of girls - until they stopped talking to me. When I confronted them, they said their mothers had warned them to stay away because they might catch my skin condition.
I more so appreciate people loving the fact that I love myself and not just glorifying my skin or me.
A journalist in Toronto named Shannon Boodram saw my Facebook page and told me I was 'strikingly beautiful.' She shot a YouTube video of me, and it made a hit, grabbing thousands of views. She said the camera loved me and that I should be a model. I had never thought about modeling - it just hadn't seemed possible.
I was never raised as the daughter with vitiligo or the granddaughter with vitiligo or the cousin with vitiligo. I was just Chantelle.
I don't do much cooking because it's impossible when you travel so much. You go grocery shopping, buy everything, and then get a call to fly out for two weeks. By the time you're back, all the food is rotten.
For me, honestly, the term 'role model' means for someone to be imitated, and I don't feel like anyone is to be imitated.
I feel like I pull inspiration from everyone, and I feel like I'm honored and grateful that people feel that they can pull inspiration from me, be inspired by me. But I definitely don't think I'm a role model. I'm not someone to be imitated.
Even as a little girl, my mom never wanted me to watch BET, but when I was at my grandparents' house, and my older cousins were there and I could watch it, I was infatuated with the idea that I could one day be a DJ or the host of a show.
I'm just living life. And if that inspires you, I'm proud, but I'm not going to put pressure on myself to be the best person in the world and tell everyone I have vitiligo. If you want to know about it, you can do your research. Either way, I'm not in the dictionary under 'vitiligo.'
Nick Knight was my first big gig as a 'real' model. Prior to and during 'ANTM,' I never actually called myself a model because I always viewed it as a hobby.
I get comments saying that I'm a leper, I control how my skin changes, I bleach my skin, my skin's burned. None of those are true.
