Last night, the women competing to for the title of America’s Next Top Model posed to raise awareness of bullying in schools. Each potential model wrote a word on themselves that their fellow students used to persecute and harass them; one of them selected the word queer.

“I picked queer because I experience rejection and people talking about me because of my sexuality,” Kayla Ferrel said to show host Tyra Banks. “I was nervous about having it written all over my body because I knew how much it hurt me.”

Ferrel — a lesbian, who came out during 10th grade — broke down in tears when explaining to the judges exactly how fellow students tortured her because of her sexuality. She was so traumatized by her classmates after coming out that she transferred to a different high school.

“You can’t fully understand unless you are who I am or in my community, so to have queer written all over your body is not easy,” Ferrel said.