Molly Burke started out as a YouTube creator because none of the beauty and lifestyle influencers she enjoyed watching were blind.John Lehmann/The Globe and Mail
The Globe and Mail’s Accessibility Profiles feature conversations highlighting disabled artists, creators, and community leaders.
The first time I watched Molly Burke’s YouTube video Blind Jokes Are Funny . . . Sometimes, I was 12 years old. I was already glued to makeup tutorials and photography videos, but Burke’s work felt different. Speaking about her vision loss, she was approachable. Honest. Light-hearted.
It was also the first time I heard a content creator talk about having a disability. I was a middle schooler navigating my own relationship with my blindness and her approach was exactly what I needed.
Though vision loss affects more than 1.2 million people in Canada, media representation can still feel minimal. Hearing a blind person talking openly about her experience felt like a revelation.
Today, the Oakville, Ont.-born social media star has a combined following of more than four million across platforms. Splitting her time between Los Angeles and British Columbia, Burke recently announced a memoir Unseen, due out later this year. With accolades like the Forbes 30 under 30 and Allure’s A List and brand deals with companies like Tommy Hilfiger, the book is another accomplishment for one of the most popular voices in disability.
Burke’s path to YouTube started as a fan. After losing the majority of her vision in 2008, she could no longer look into store windows, swatch makeup or flip through magazines with ease. Still wanting to engage with her favourite activities, Burke turned to the internet. Beauty creators and lifestyle videos gave her access to visual facets of the beauty world she could no longer see.
But none of the beauty influencers she loved were blind. At 20, Burke decided to remedy the lack of representation by speaking for herself.
“If sighted girls could have beauty videos to follow, why couldn’t blind girls?” Burke said during our recent phone interview.
Her early YouTube offerings shared beauty tips and tutorials. But soon she also started to answer questions about things like how low-vision people use technology and what it’s like dating with a disability. The approach was a winning formula. Blind people like me had someone to relate to. People with vision had a fun personality answering questions they might be too scared to ask.
As Burke’s platform grew, so did the pressure of being successful. One individual can’t possibly be a spokesperson for the whole blind community. Comments questioning the authenticity of her vision loss didn’t help. While her career was blossoming, it all began to add up.
“I remember around 2019, I really hit a wall. I’d been doing this for five years, and was still the only really big disabled creator. I felt really alone.”
That feeling is something a lot of blind and visually impaired people have experienced. When strangers meet their first blind person in the wild, their reaction is often curiosity. They ask questions about your medical records. How you do things in your day-to-day life. If you can see something – the majority of people with vision loss have remaining visual stimuli – then are you really blind? Repeatedly having to answer those kinds of questions can feel isolating and invasive – a reminder that you’re different. I can only imagine how that would feel with millions of viewers.
Being an open book came naturally to Burke, but she had to learn how to create boundaries as a disabled woman and as a public figure.
“Being blind is always going to be harder than being sighted,” Burke said. “But what I try my best to do – and what I’ve always tried my best to do when I get upset or angry or sad about something – is to figure out how I can take this and turn it into something good.”
In an effort to use her platform to communicate that blindness is not a monolith, she started her series Blind Leading The Blind, where she makes content with other blind people doing something she can’t.
Over the past few months, her videos have also taken on a new type of honesty. In addition to addressing the curiosities of her sighted viewers, she is asking raw questions of herself and our community. Videos like Who I think I’d be if I was sighted and The Real Reason I Bought My Cartier Love Bracelet. . . (spoiler, it’s kinda sad) are some of Burke’s most intimate conversations to date.
“I genuinely believe that vulnerability is the only way to bridge gaps in society,” Burke said.
The Bracelet video hit particularly close to home. She reflects on how she bought herself the virally expensive Cartier love bracelet, not just as a status symbol, but as an attempt to prove that she belonged in her field amongst non-disabled influencers.
She puts into words more complicated struggles I’ve been dealing with: Being the only disabled person in a room. The paranoia that when things go well, people assume I’m only there because of my disability.
Watching Burke’s makeup videos as a kid gave me permission to love my blurry, incomplete and imperfect visual world. She taught me that my visual perspective, albeit limited, is valid. But listening to her talk about imposter syndrome and feelings of inadequacy as an adult reminded me both of the importance of representation and why almost a decade later, I’m still such a fan.
