An influencer has hit back at trolls who say her cleft lip looks like badly-done filler or that she’s a “botched Barbie” – with their evil comments only making her “more confident”.

Steph Heintz was born with a cleft palate and lip, and uses her TikTok (@stepheintz ), where she has over 580,000 followers, to break the stigma around the facial deformity.

The 36-year-old receives hateful remarks by keyboard warriors daily asking her “when she’s going to fix her mouth”– but refuses to let them get to her.

The fashion executive is sharing her experience to help others and encourage anyone with facial differences to be proud of their beauty.

“I really have kind of re-programmed the message in my brain to be like, if someone's going to take a shot at me. Calling me like a ‘botched Barbie’ or something, they must think I look so good,” Steph, from New York, US, told NeedToKnow.co.uk.

“My comment section is always filled with comments about fixing my lip and what's wrong with that like I had a botch job or whatever.

“Quite frankly, I am putting it on TikTok now because I am confident in a way I wasn't as a kid.

“I call it my cleft confidence.”

Steph says she wishes that she had someone with her condition to look up to as a child, as it wasn’t spoken about as much at the time.

But social media has changed the game and the New Yorker intends to be that face for others now.

To build her confidence, she’s had various beauty treatments throughout the years including laser for scarring and a small amount of lip filler to even the cleft lip out.

She said: “Part of my confidence comes from the fact I’ve lasered my scars and that I have some filler in my lip.

“I’ve also had my teeth done and I love my smile.

“But all these things allow me to like, brush it all [the negative comments] off.

“It's not that it doesn't bother me. There have been videos of me crying [about the hate I get online and offline].

“There have been people screaming at me on the street, just absolutely insane things.

“But I'm a tough woman, a tough cookie.”

By breaking into the social media sphere, the 36-year-old hopes to raise awareness of the condition and break into the beauty scene – to prove that her difference isn’t a disadvantage, it’s a “superpower”.

Steph said: ““There are some times where I look at my videos, and I'm like, wow, my cliff is like really showing.

“But now, I am kind of obsessed with it.

“I feel good about myself.

“My biggest goal is to have a cleft face in a beauty campaign.

“I want kids to be like, ‘Oh my god, I'm beautiful too' and to feel included.

“There's something about having a facial difference that's just going to make you stronger, and more empathetic, which are irreplaceable golden traits.

“Your cleft is going to bring you uniqueness, it's going to bring you a bigger heart, you're going to have way more compassion and empathy.

“And you see the world just so differently that people can't see. “

ENDS