Spencer Barbosa loves a makeunder. The 22-year-old influencer grew up watching makeover shows and movies where the plot was always the same. A girl would take off her glasses, put on a full face of makeup, get the right haircut…and finally be considered pretty.
“Everyone would convince them that they went from ugly to beautiful, which is not true at all, and honestly, hurtful to watch,” Barbosa says. “There is so much pressure to always look a certain way and dress a certain way, even since we were so little. What is this beauty standard where we all want to look the exact same?”
Her latest project, five years in the making, is flipping the script on the traditional makeover. In Flawed, her new docu-reality series, the goal is a makeunder — where the transformation happens without contact lenses, lip gloss, or a blowout.
Barbosa is a self-love content creator with millions of followers on TikTok, Instagram and YouTube. Since blowing up on TikTok during the pandemic, she has built a devoted online community that can’t get enough of her relatable content, brutally honest relationship advice, and empowering posts about body image, confidence, and self-acceptance.
In Flawed, Barbosa brings the same positivity and refreshing honesty she’s beloved for online to help five real people on their self-love journeys. In each 12-minute episode, Barbosa meets a guest who opens up about their “flaw”—whether it’s acne, alopecia, or a double mastectomy. Barbosa then matches them with a coach, who challenges them to dive deeper into all the difficult emotions surrounding their “flaw”. It all wraps up with a self-love photoshoot, a transformative moment where each guest embraces their unique trait, finally able to love themselves as they are.
As the host of Flawed, Barbosa witnessed each guest’s self-love journey firsthand and saw just how much can change in a single day of shooting. The first episode, available to watch on YouTube, follows Natalie, a mother of four who has lived with alopecia since she was 10 years old. “She’s never left the house without a wig, and by the end of the day, she’s doing a photoshoot with no wig on, embracing the way that she looks and loving it,” Barbosa says.
One of Barbosa’s biggest hopes for the series is that viewers leave feeling more confident and less inclined to judge themselves and others. However, the journey to self-love isn’t linear. As someone constantly immersed in social media for her job, Barbosa admits that avoiding judgment and comparison is a challenge.
“I want to have a very positive experience on social media. But it’s inevitable that sometimes you’re going to go on your phone, you’re going to compare yourself to other people, because that’s what humans do,” she says.
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A major theme across Barbosa’s content is body positivity. She’s unapologetic about belly rolls, bloating, and body hair. She reframes harmful messages about weight loss, dieting, and body image, showing her followers that it is possible to simply love your body the way it is. But part of what makes Barbosa’s content so authentic is that she shares not only the moments when she’s confident and thriving—but also the moments she’s not. She often opens up about times when she was hesitant to wear certain outfits, hated certain photos of herself, and of course, when cruel comments about her body get to her.
“I’m constantly posting, being like: ‘Don’t compare yourself. Love yourself.’ But it’s hard to post online and get so much feedback about your life every single day,” Barbosa says. “I have to realize it’s not the norm to get 100 hate comments a day…it’s hard not to internalize that.”
For Barbosa, despite these challenges, content creation is her passion—one that began long before anyone was commenting on her posts. “I started my YouTube channel when I was in grade seven, and nobody watched my videos for years,” she says. But five years later, everything started to take off. “It got to a point where I was like, okay, wait, maybe I can quit my job with Dairy Queen…and then it just turned into a whole career.”
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Since then, there’s been a whirlwind of unforgettable moments— hitting 1 million followers, meeting huge stars like Selena Gomez and Ryan Gosling, launching a swimwear collection with Hollister. But for Barbosa, seeing how her content can empower people is one of the most rewarding parts of her job.
“I love that I can make an impact on other people’s lives. I am always trying to make the people around me happy. If I can post online and help other people love themselves, that’s my favourite thing. Like, why would I not love that?”
At the Toronto premiere of Flawed last week, Barbosa’s friends, family, and followers gathered to watch the series for the first time. “I was so nervous for people to watch it…but when that episode finished, and I looked around and I saw everyone crying… we have created a show that is so meaningful that people are crying!” Barbosa says. “There’s so much negative going on that if somebody watching the show can leave after 10 minutes feeling just a little bit better…that is so, so needed in this world.”
All episodes of Flawed are available to stream now on Fibe TV.
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