Fats Timbo: ‘It was hard growing up with dwarfism – but I’m going to change the world’

Fats Timbo is thriving. She has three million followers on TikTok, has modelled for Vogue and is a growing presence on our TV screens. Stardom is in her grasp thanks to her wit and charisma. And she is doing it all while standing up for the Black disabled community.

But being different has not always been easy. Born with achondroplasia, a form of dwarfism, Timbo was relentlessly bullied while growing up and had to fight to rebuild her confidence, relying on humour as a defence mechanism.

“As a teenager, you want to be accepted by people. I’d often be confused why people don’t like me, and overcompensate within friendships, and people would take advantage of that. I found it hard having dwarfism and growing up with it, but I think after a while, I realised my self-worth,” Timbo says.

She recalls a distressing incident where a group of boys picked her up and put her in a bin, as well as cruel messages sent by cyber bullies after school.

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“It was horrible. I hated the way kids made me feel,” Timbo says. “I don’t know how I kept going, but there was no other choice. I still had to go school the next day. I told the teachers. They got expelled. I felt a little bit safer, and I felt listened to, but it was traumatising.”

Timbo, whose birth name is Fatima but is better known as Fats, feels lucky she has an incredible family. Her parents instilled an “unshakeable confidence” and told her that as long as she had their love, “nobody’s hate should affect you.”

Both her parents had come to Britain in the 90s after fleeing war in Sierra Leone. They met as cleaners in a hotel here, working hard for little pay. Timbo’s mum offered to cook for her dad because he was homesick for food from Sierra Leone and, the story goes, she never left after that.

“Sierra Leone is such a poor country. You have to work so hard to get to this country, and then you come here and have to work even harder. They have resilience and instilled that in their children. They kept striving for more,” Timbo says.

Timbo’s parents both went to university despite having five children. Her father had wanted to go to medical school but could not afford to study for so long, so he became a mental health nurse and ward manager. Her mother was a general health nurse.

“They’ve worked in the NHS for so many years and saved lives,” Timbo says. “Seeing that helps me be empathetic to others, not to judge people and accept them as they are.”

Her parents had wanted her to choose a sensible, stable career. She has dyslexia but was skilled at maths, so she worked hard and got a good job in accounting.

“I absolutely hated it,” she laughs. “Fortunately, the pandemic happened, and they let me go. I was upset, but at the same time, I thought: ‘This is my opportunity.'”

Timbo has always loved to perform, dance and act – it was her dream to work in the creative industries. And she is funny. She enjoys making light of being small.

So with the outside world shut during lockdown, she turned to content creation, making witty videos to entertain and educate. She had a following already, having appeared on reality TV showThe Undateables, but TikTok launched her career.

“I was doing it for fun and seeing where it goes,” she says, “but I thought if I could build a fanbase, I might be able to monetise it in the future.”

Some of her videos went viral and, a year after she left accounting, she got her first four-figure deal with a brand, and she realised she could make TikTok a career. Her parents got on board too.

“After that, it kind of skyrocketed,” Timbo says. She has taken on presenting roles with Channel 4 for the Paralympics, and appeared in shows including Celebrity Gogglebox, Celebrity Mastermind and Stand up to Cancer. She was recognised at the GLAMOUR Women of the Year Awards, and she wrote a bookMain Character Energy.

“My confidence has grown from strength to strength, and now I feel like I could do anything,” Timbo says. 

There are still challenges. She faces online trolling because of her appearance, and has had to learn to numb herself to hate. She uses the block button liberally and while remarks can be hurtful, she says she feels more sorry for the trolls who are going out of their way to be unkind than for herself.

In the outside world, people stare as she walks down the street – and that happened long before she appeared on TV. 

“When I was younger, having eyes on me was a lot,” Fats Timbo recalls. “You want to blend in. How can you blend in when you feel like you are wearing a funny costume all the time? I just try my best not to look into people’s faces and focus on where I’m going. That helped me. It reminded me I don’t need to be self conscious.”

Timbo struggled when she was dating too. Men used to ask if she could walk a few steps behind so they would not be seen together. There was a time when she accepted this because she was so desperate to be loved. 

Now, she has a fiancé who is proud to walk beside her – he has cerebral palsy and understands how it feels to stand out because of a disability – and she knows she is deserving of love. But she worries for others who are struggling to find confidence.

Part of the problem, Timbo believes, is the way little people are portrayed in culture.

“What annoys me most is the representation, growing up and not seeing anybody who looks like you. You go and watch Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, you see people that look like you being made fun of and they’re caricatures. It really puts a damper on your self esteem. Everyone’s watched that, so that’s what everyone perceives you as – an Oompa Loompa.

“I did not choose this narrative for me. I’m living a normal life. So I’m confused in my head, what am I? Am I worthless? Or am I worth something? You have all these questions. Now, there’s better representation for little people, but it is still not the best. We are still made fun of all the time. So I’m working to change that.”

There needs to be positive representation, and while Timbo is conscious that she might be tokenised as a Black disabled woman, she wants to change the narrative, so it becomes normal to see people of colour with dwarfism on our TV screens. She dreams of acting, or presenting documentaries.

And she wants to keep using her platform as a force for good. A few years ago, she returned to Sierra Leone with her family, and she fell in love with the rich culture and the warmth of the people. There, she met three young disabled people who were begging on the street. She walked past them at first and they called out, saying she was no different from them. 

In that moment, she realised that had her parents never left Sierra Leone, where there is little financial support for people with disabilities, she may have found herself in a similar situation. She returned to speak with them and give them money, and it has inspired her to one day return to Sierra Leone to tell the stories of disabled people and advocate for more support. Fats Timbo wants to change the world.

“I want to change the world with my presence, with my story, with my charisma, and with my talent,” she says, grinning. “And hopefully by the time I change the world, you’ll see more disabled people in movies, on magazine front covers, and it’s not going to be a thing. It’s not going to be tokenism. Whether you have a hidden disability or a visual one, let’s talk about it more. Let’s include people more. Let’s be more accepting.”

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