April was 15 and inseparable with her best friend. Late on February 6, 1997, while having a sleepover, they received a phone call from friends, asking for them to come outside. April and her BFF went to the lobby of the building and saw a girl outside who appeared angry and erratic. “My instinct told me not to go outside,” April began, “but I did because I saw my friend. And then I was attacked from behind.”
She was fighting a girl and she didn’t know why. She didn’t know she was cut until she saw blood. “I saw myself bleeding because I looked at my reflection through the glass and I thought I was scratched. But then someone started screaming ‘You’re cut! You’re cut!’”
April received 175 stitches on her face. “The doctor assumed I was cut by a straight razor because of the precision of the lacerations,” she said. Before the attack everyone told April how beautiful she was, with beautiful eyes and high cheekbones. After the attack people called her scarface. Those words wounded her deeply. “It was devastating, traumatizing,” April remembers. “It was my own friends.”
“I wanted to share this story because in the inner city communities violence and bullying is something that’s prevalent amongst our youth. It needs to stop. This photoshoot is my first step in doing something about it.”Most inspiring of all, April met with her attacker not long after the incident and found the strength to forgive her, when her attacker told her that she attacked April because she was jealous of her beauty.This behavior is the type she wants to see in the inner community prevail over the vicious attack she and other girls have endured due to jealousy and rage. April wrote about her experience in her notebook to prepare for telling her story. Now in DE since 2018, April has not only overcome those physical scars, but given back to society by being an EMT paramedic AND started her only make up line - Girley Bell's - named after her Grandmother. April’s grandmother, always told her she was beautiful, but also that beauty is only skin deep, and her attack taught her that. Her favorite quote is “pretty is as pretty does” and she tries to live her life by that. “It’s what’s inside that makes you beautiful on the outside,” April continued, “In today's society, everybody is about wanting to change themselves to fit in, surgery and forgetting about that true beauty is from within.” So she started her own make-up line. Her goal is now to be a multinational retailer of beauty products that represent living authentically yourself. April has truly found beauty and a purpose from her tragedy.Writing by: @el_de_em. @SHACKDE7 Photography by: @john_mollura #REFiguredproject #ichoosebeauty #speaklife #healingtrauma #survivor #celebrationsofsurvival #scars
Girley Bell's Owner April B was born & Raised in Brooklyn, New York with the blessing of an old school, wise, beautiful, don't take no mess grandmother (Girley Bell). She was a Girley girl who loved makeup looks all her life.
As a child, I watched my grandmother do her makeup and brushed her hair at the vanity table everyday. Beautiful heart shape lips, she would line her lips with lipstick and smacked her lips together. Giving me a kiss on my cheek that I would never want to wash off.
She would shape up her eyebrows then fill them in with an eyebrow pencil. My grandmother was so amazingly beautiful and wise to me. I shaved off my eyebrows at 11 years old. Silly me, I've been filling them in ever since. Girley Bell's Art Of Beauty is dedicated to THEE GIRLEY BELL my grandmother for instilling in me that beauty is only skin deep. In my grandmother's words, "Pretty is as pretty does April."
Girley Bell's mission is to develop a lifelong journey of helping others that struggle in poverty stricken communities with self reflection, clarity of purpose, independence, entrepreneurship, mentorship and safeguarding our children.
To inspire PURPOSE as a way of being in all humankind. Helping to set goals, execute vision board goals, initiating personal family structure dynamics. Demonstrate future-mindedness, entrepreneurial skills, develop a sense of purpose and involving in taking action on issues that matter to us.
