YouTube star 'NikkieTutorials' comes out as transgender in YouTube video

YouTube sensation Nikkie de Jager, known to her millions of subscribers and Instagram followers as "NikkieTutorials," posted a video on Monday in which she revealed she is transgender.

“I want to start the year off with the truth, I want to start the year off by finally revealing a part of my life that has made me who I am," she said early on in the 17-minute video. "I want to talk about a part of myself that makes me, me. I can’t believe I’m saying this today to all of you for the entire world to see but damn it feels good to finally do it. When I was younger, I was born in the wrong body which means that I am transgender. Now, so surreal saying this. Filming this video is scary but it feels so liberating and freeing.”

As of late Monday afternoon, the video had more than 500,000 views and close to 89,000 comments.

“I am NikkieTutorials and I am Nikkie,” continued de Jager, who hails from The Netherlands. “I am me. We don’t need labels. If we are going to put a label on it, yes, I am transgender. But at the end of the day, I am me. And at the end of the day, you are you.”

In the video, de Jager, 25, adds that her mother, who owns the Dutch cosmetics company Het Cosmeticahuis, was certain she was going to have a daughter. Her mother never expected to deliver a boy, de Jager said, adding that it was “definitely a surprise to me as soon as I had brains to think with.” Later in the video, de Jager thanked her mother for her support.

De Jager first burst on the YouTube scene in 2008 when she was 14 and began uploading videos after being inspired by reality TV star Lauren Conrad's makeup on "The Hills." She searched YouTube for tutorials to recreate Conrad's look and two years later studied makeup coursework at B Academy in Amsterdam. By 2013, she landed a job as head makeup artist on the Dutch reality show "I Can Make You a Supermodel" and a year later branched out as a freelance hair and makeup artist.

Her success led Forbes magazine to name her one of the Top 10 beauty influencers in 2017. She now has 12.7 million subscribers on YouTube and 12.9 million Instagram followers.

In the video, de Jager touched on her relationship with her fiance, Dylan, who proposed to her last summer. De Jager admitted that she “wished she told him sooner.”

Near the end of the video, de Jager said she was being blackmailed by people who wanted to out her, and finished by thanking her followers, her family and her fiance.

De Jager had two brothers. Her younger sibling, Mikai, died of lymphatic cancer at age 14 in 2018.