Beauty guru James Charles rose to fame extremely fast, and these days, he’s one of our absolute favorite YouTubers. That said, there are still a ton of people who are unfamiliar with him and his work, and inevitably, there are loads of critics with several misconceptions about him.

In a recent interview with ABC News, the 19-year-old addressed one of the biggest misconceptions, which is that he’s transgender.

“It goes without saying, I’m not,” the makeup artist said. “I’m confident in myself and my gender identity — [I’m] happy being a boy. But at the same time, I love makeup I have a full set of nails on all the time.”

That’s right! One of our all-time favorite things about James is that he’s comfortable with himself, and he told the outlet that he’s “done drag looks, worn full wigs, butt pads, the full shebang. Been a woman [for a] few minutes. And I love it.”

Of course, James’ confidence is admired by so many, which makes him a great role model for his young subscribers who are just starting to figure out who they truly are.

“I want to be a role model for everybody no matter what age, size, where they come from, color,” the Sisters Apparel founder said. “And so like, if that means talking about it to get the word out there and to tell people that it’s OK to express yourself, I’m down. I’ll talk about it all day long.”

But even though he’s successful now, he wants fans to know that it was a long road to get here. Despite his rapid rise to fame, James had to dodge haters his entire career — especially in the beginning.

“When I first started it was really hard to not look back,” he said. “I would’ve gotten into a lot of fights and a lot of drama early on.”

As his platform continued to grow, James said he “got a little better at it and learned to hold myself back and got involved a little bit less.” These days, for example, he looks at social media comments much less frequently.

TBH, the way he deals with bullies now sounds very similar to how he dealt with them back in high school. As a teenager, he was bullied “a lot” for expressing himself much like he does on his channel, and typically, he would just ignore it.

“I would try really hard to not pay attention and sometimes too, it is important to stand up for yourself,” he said. “And sometimes I would clap back and they weren’t expecting that.”

Yep! That’s definitely the James Charles we all know and love.

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