Belfast, UK - After getting eye-catching tattoos all over her body, Belfast native Anaya Peterson decided to get the whites of her eyes inked up. Now, while facing potential blindness, she is busying herself fighting back against the haters.

Having racked up almost sixty thousand TikTok followers and just under four million likes on the platform, you'd think that Anaya Peterson would be on top of the world.

Sadly, one of the many body modifications that have made her famous – the tattoos she had inked onto the whites of her eyes – are causing severe damage to her eyesight.

Speaking to Newsweek, Peterson explained that after a few weeks with minimal symptoms, directly after getting the tattoos back in 2021, her eyelids and face violently swelled up.

She called the experience "traumatizing" and attributed it to a rare autoimmune disease called tattoo sarcoidosis.

The US National Library of Medicine defines the condition as a "Granulomatous disease that can affect multiple organ systems, with skin involvement seen in approximately 25% of cases."

Tattoo sarcoidosis can be painful and usually affects the skin, but in Peterson's case, it was her eyes that suffered. She has experienced serious sight loss and is now under treatment.

"My sarcoidosis is treated with steroids, but that made me put on 28 pounds," she told Newsweek, before admitting: "If I didn't have sarcoidosis, nothing would have happened to my eyes."

Peterson has drawn criticism online, especially after it came out that her daughter asked her not to get the eye tattoos out of fear that she would go blind.

In response to the hate, the TikToker posted several videos hitting back in style. In one video, captioned "This is exactly what my daughter thinks of all u lots negative comments lmao," she pokes her forked-tongue out at commenters.

"I honestly can't understand why people think they can have opinions on what others should do with their body," she told Newsweek. "It has zero effect on them."

"Once I started [getting tattoos], I couldn't stop... I will get tattoos until I die."