The Shady Side Of The TikToker Known As 'Scar Girl'
As entertaining as TikTok stars may be, you can pretty much assume that scandal will eventually find them in one form or another. Over the years, many of the app's most popular users have found themselves in the middle of legal trouble, blistering feuds, and/or other serious confrontations. Of course, there are lesser scandals surrounding TikTok stars, which aren't necessarily super egregious as, say, licking a toilet seat during a pandemic, like Ava Louise, per Seventeen.
One person who's experienced (or perhaps even contributed to) one of these lukewarm scandals is an 18-year-old girl named "Scar Girl" — one of the most famous TikTok stars — who's garnered a pretty shady reputation for the way she's handled the interest in her facial scar. As of October 2023, Scar Girl has amassed an impressive following on TikTok — over 814,000 followers. Oh, and in case you didn't know, Scar Girl isn't actually her legal name, it's Annie Bonelli, however, her fans and casual observers gifted her with the unique name after noticing her proudly displaying a large facial scar — which she reportedly got in 2020, per The Atlantic. However, Bonelli hasn't exactly become the face of body acceptance and self-love. Instead, fans have started to wonder if her scar is real or if she'd been manipulating her followers so that she could get famous.
Here's everything you need to know about the shady side of TikTok's Scar Girl.
Fans think Scar Girl 's scar is fake
One downside to gaining followers due to a physical attribute is the fact that the internet notices even the slightest change. And that's exactly what happened to Annie Bonelli. According to the Daily Dot, the same followers that boosted her public profile eventually noticed that her scar — which originally was light brown — seemed to be changing shape and getting considerably darker. In September 2022, TikTok user @Aauriettv spliced various shots of Bonelli's scar throughout the year and implied that she may have been enhancing it with cosmetics. There's no proof, but that didn't stop TikTok from running with this theory, spawning endless commentary.
Unfortunately, Scar Girl hasn't just had to deal with her peers questioning her scar. Doctors and dermatologists have also made content surrounding her scar, and their conclusions aren't exactly flattering for Bonelli. For example, Dr. Emil Kohan responded on TikTok to a similar video showing the evolution of Bonelli's scar, where a narrator said, "How does this ... turn into this?!" Dr. Kohan then cut in, saying, "A normal scar turns pink and red, becomes a little darker, then over months, it fades ... especially if you have lighter skin. It doesn't become a dark eyebrow on your face. Cue the off-camera laughter. In a follow-up video, Dr. Kohan seemed to call Bonelli's bluff about it being a chemical burn and offered to treat her for free. It doesn't appear that she took him up on the offer.
What Scar Girl has said about her own scar
According to one of her TikTok videos, Annie Bonelli, widely known as Scar Girl, first got the mark in 2020 when she was only 15. She didn't specify exactly what — or who — caused it but implied that she'd been the victim of violence. "I felt like the opportunity to look at myself in the mirror and smile was taken away from me because of a cruel situation," Bonelli captioned the video. When appearing on the BFFs podcast, Bonelli again refused to reveal how she got the scar, calling the situation that led to her injury something private. However, she added further insight into why it appears to have changed over time. "It's two separate injuries," Bonelli explained, adding that a chemical burn made the mark appear more prominent.
During a February 2023 Rolling Stone interview, Bonelli expounded more. After admitting that the lack of other TikTok users with scars made her feel insecure, she explained that she'd applied a topical treatment to eliminate the scar. "That topical did not go well," said Bonellio. And I had a complete chemical burn. Terrible reaction. I had to wait for that to heal. So now it's supposed to get worse before it gets better." And though Bonelli didn't provide medical records that could prove her version of events, she implied that she might one day tell the entire story surrounding her scar. "But for right now, I feel like where I got my scar doesn't matter as much as [what] I'm doing with it now," she added.
Bonelli appears to have taken much of the criticism in stride. That said, she did call out social media users when speaking to NBC News. "I feel like on social media people get so comfortable, especially with influencers in general, to make comments on things," she explained, adding, "I'm a real person."