The beauty maven has garnered over four million followers on TikTok, where she shares a plethora of videos creating different makeup looks.
“Journey” gets used a lot these days as a way of describing life’s unfolding, but for social media sensation Gabe Adams-Wheatley, it’s a deeply accurate descriptor in so many ways.
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The Brazilian-born influencer has Hanhart syndrome, a condition that can lead to missing limbs at birth; her birth mother abandoned her, and her birth father “had already left her for another family.” Plans were put in place to send Adams-Wheatley to America for medical treatment, but what actually came next was an adoption by a family in Utah. And she hasn’t stopped since, pushing herself to evolve from teenage dance enthusiast to motivational speaker and, more recently, makeup-tutorial maven.
“I first got into makeup because I used to be a dancer in high school,” says the Salt Lake City-based entrepreneur, who only recently came out as trans. “I remember coming home one day and telling my parents I needed to get some makeup. I come from a very conservative religious background, and the reaction was ‘Men don’t wear makeup.’ I explained that every TV actor and news anchor wears it. So, they let me buy some products and said, ‘You can only wear them when you’re performing.’”
But Adams-Wheatley found herself sneakily putting it on before she’d leave for school. “I didn’t know what I was doing,” she admits of her initial attempts to apply blush, bronzer and beyond. It was one of her brothers (Adams-Wheatley is one of 14 kids and the only adoptee) who motivated her to get more serious about the pursuit. “That…
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