THE YOUTUBER
Stef Sanjati is the definition of an open book. For over a decade, the 24-year-old Toronto-based YouTube star, transgender activist and Rimmel brand ambassador has been vlogging about her most intimate experiences. Her channel, which has amassed hundreds of thousands of subscribers, started with simple makeup tutorials but morphed into raw, unfiltered videos chronicling everything from the procedures of her feminization surgery back in 2016 to her inherited genetic trait, Waardenburg syndrome—a condition that causes her to have wider-set facial features, hearing loss and pigmentation loss in her hair, skin and eyes. For this candid social media buff, her first dabble in makeup was a vivid one. When Sanjati was 13 and identifying as a young gay man, her mother took her to buy her first makeup kit, which consisted of black and gold eyeshadow and liquid liner. Little did Sanjati realize at the time that “that was an extension of [her] experimenting with gender,” she says. Her initial looks of “wild, graphic, painterly” makeup were purely for fun—until she watched one game-changing tutorial on how liner could create the illusion of closer-set eyes. Sanjati began creating a double-wing look by drawing an extended solid line down the inner corners of her eyes to match the outer wing. It was a bold, graphic look rooted in self-doubt. “I was very insecure about the space between my eyes,” she recalls. “I couldn’t leave the house without [eyeliner].” And growing up in a small town in southern Ontario, Sanjati felt anything but ordinary. “There was one kind of person, and that was all you were allowed to be,” she says. “It’s extremely alienating not being able to see yourself or anybody else who is different from the majority.” After her medical transition and facialfeminization surgery, Sanjati’s approach to makeup shifted. “Earlier in my transition, before any surgery, before my hormones were really kicking into high gear, I still used makeup to create a different face,” she says. Today, it’s all about enhancement through a “softer and more romantic” smudged-liner look. But she keeps her exaggerated cat-eye in her back pocket for nights out. “I’ve entered a time in life where I’m more content and more confident with who I am at my core without any makeup on,” she says. “I don’t use it in the same transformative way. My approach to eyeliner is no longer about hiding my eye shape; it’s now about how cool that shape is.”