Norah Myers, 36, is more than just a woman with cerebral palsy. She teaches Pilates to others — specializing in a modified version for people with disabilities — is a strong advocate for minority communities, and adores Billie Eilish.
Myers' TikTok account has amassed a following of 1.1 million and she has over 15 million likes on her page. Although her modified Pilates videos have drawn followers in, most viewers know her for her courageous responses to internet trolls.
"No one wants to marry you," one user commented on one of Myers' TikTok videos.
"I am just gonna be real with you, you don't fit the beauty standards people are desiring," another comment reads.
Myers, who tells TODAY.com she originally downloaded TikTok solely to view content from Billie Eilish, says she receives dozens of cruel comments on a daily basis.
On another TikTok, Myers can be seen sharing her gripes on working in a corporate environment, and why it was not conducive for her to keep pursuing a corporate job. One user commented, "mam, that's just cuz of ur looks."
Instead of surrendering to comment, Myers came right back with a response.
"OK, I get it. I'm ugly. I know this. But I did not leave a difficult corporate job because I'm ugly," she says in her video response on TikTok. This video garnered 14.4 million views.
Since then, Myers has made a handful of videos where she addresses similar hateful comments left on her TikTok posts.
"I was saying to a friend yesterday, I think people were almost competing to leave the meanest comment that they could to see if I would respond to it," Myers tells TODAY.com. "People say, 'I would never go to you because you're fat and you don't look like how a Pilates instructor should look. I get that every day."
But, fortunately, since the first video where Myers began directly addressing her bullies, she has received an outpouring of comments that show love, support and kindness from her fans.
"Norah we love you!!" TikTok-famous content creator Dylan Mulvaney commented.
"I’ve never seen someone get so much hate. You are so beautiful and I hope you see this comment. We all need to uplift each other and not tear down!!!" another user said.
TikTok celebrity Ophelia also chimed in. "I hope you know how wonderful you are ❤️🥲," she commented.
Changing the narrative
Although she has amassed a large following with her courageous comebacks, she doesn’t want to be known as “the girl who responds to hate comments,” she tells TODAY.com.
"I think maybe 20% of my following might be for Pilates. And then the rest, they either "hate follow" me or they follow me from people stitching my videos and stuff," she says.
Myers says that her goal is not to prove that she can fight back at bullies, but to ultimately prove that anyone can be anything they want to be, regardless of what the non-believers have to say. And in Myers' case, it's being a Pilates instructor.
Her main goal? To inspire those who have disabilities to feel comfortable trying Pilates — a mission Myers is extremely passionate about.
The journey from student to teacher
Myers practiced Pilates for over a decade before she decided to become an instructor. She stepped into the teaching world when her former instructor presented her with an opportunity.
She said she came into class one day feeling down because she had just been let go from her corporate job.
“I’m not even kidding. The next day I went to my Pilates class and the studio owner said to me, ‘How’s work?’ And I said, ‘Oh, they dumped me. I don’t know what I’m going to do.’” Myers recalls.
Serendipitously, the studio owner asked Myers to be an instructor, to which Myers replied with a resounding yes.
"I learned modified Pilates as a client, so I understood and used modifications in a way that a non-disabled instructor might not have to as much as I do. So I came to Pilates teaching with over a decade of understanding," she says.
Myers says that when she started Pilates, she not only used it as a form of exercise but also for disability management. She knew that once she began teaching, she would take her personal experience modifying her workouts as a person with cerebral palsy to help her clients — especially those with disabilities — to find their own joy and success with Pilates.
"I knew right away, from the second it clicked — I said, I am going to teach the disability community. I’m going to show up for the disability community, and I am going to serve this underserved and underrepresented community in the health and wellness industry," Myers explains.
This understanding has aided Myers in building personal and customized Pilates classes for all of her clients to ensure that their adaptive Pilates experiences are comfortable and successful.
Seeing disability as a strength
Myers says that teaching Pilates to underserved communities allows her to feel as though her disability is a strength rather than a weakness.
"It's an asset. It's an advantage because clients tell me they're not intimidated working with me. They feel comfortable working with me. They feel that it's a safe and welcoming space and they feel understood in a way that they might not feel with a Pilates instructor who doesn't have a disability," Myers says.
She also notes that, from the beginning, all she wanted was for minority groups, especially those with disabilities, to feel included in the practice of Pilates — and maybe even inspire some of those people to become instructors themselves.
"My only intention from the very beginning was if I can inspire one person with disabilities to believe that Pilates is within their capability, then my job's done."
And in her quest to popularize and normalize adaptive Pilates, she has one other lofty goal that she hopes to someday achieve: teach Pilates to her favorite singer, Billie Eilish. She even has a TikTok Pilates series, aptly titled "All the Good Girls Do Pilates" named after Billie Eilish's song, "All the Good Girls Go to Hell."
"I sat down, I manifested and I said, 'Okay, if Billie were my client, what would I do?' So then I made a series, and over the month of October for 30 days, I posted an exercise every day from the series that I would teach for Billie if she were my client," she explains, beaming at the possibility of Eilish noticing her series.
And, in a stroke of luck, Billie Eilish did notice Myers, commenting on one of her TikToks that she "loves" her. Mission accomplished.
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