Brad Goreski: I Was Bullied Every Day

Brad Goreski's A-crowd rolodex is growing plumper by the minute, but once upon a time, a "short, chubby, bucktoothed" Brad experienced more name calling than dropping names.

Brad revealed a bit of the bullying during this week's It's a Brad, Brad World, and recently opened up further to Elle Canada. "I played with Barbies, I sang in the choir, I hung out with girls and I loved fashion. I already had an appetite for designer clothing in pastels of light yellow, mauve and turquoise," the celebrity stylist tells the mag about growing up in Port Perry, Ont.

Wearing an invisible bullseye for bullies, Brad confides, "Not a day went by when someone didn't call me a name. On the school bus, in class, in the hallways—it happened all the time. After hearing 'fag' on numerous occasions, I got up the nerve to ask my mother what it was. 'It's a British term for a bundle of sticks or a cigarette,' she would say. It was kind of her, but I had my suspicions that it had something to do with liking boys. The taunts were hurtful, but what I hated most was that people knew information about me that I wasn't ready to share just yet."

Determined to change things for today's gay youth who face cyber attacks as well, Brad teamed up with The Trevor Project and was recently introduced to a boy named Josh. "He had left his computer on in class. Someone went on his Tumblr site and wrote pages and pages of hateful messages," Brad says. "I tweeted him, 'I went through the same thing; it really does get better, and you don't have to own this.' He wrote back and said, 'Thanks so much—it means a lot to hear from you.'"

How else is Brad making his mark? Follow him with our Tweet Tracker.