Jelly Draper

Jelly Draper was born on November 22, 1997, in San Diego, California. She has two older brothers. One is ten years older than her and the other is about six years older than her.

She hails from a predominantly blue-collar family. None of her immediate relatives has attended college. Draper herself has maintained good grades throughout her schooling. She can play the piano as well as read sheet music. During middle school, she was part of the choir for all three years and even made it to the Wildcat Chamber. She is not a religious person. She was raised a Catholic but now, in her own words, she is “nothing”.

She has low blood platelets and that causes her to bruise and bleed easily. Her blood doesn’t clot as it is thinner than normal. Veganism has apparently helped her with that.

After Jelly Draper decided to become a vegan at the age of 16, she felt it would be a good idea to set up a YouTube channel where she would be able to communicate with fellow vegans as well as educate people about the lifestyle. With that in mind, she created her channel on March 28, 2013. However, it took her two years before she uploaded her first video on YouTube. Posted on March 23, 2015, the video is titled ‘What I Eat In a Day (Rawtill4) + Farmers Market’. It was short (not even three minutes long), full of information, and perfectly set the tone for the content that would follow.

In time, she started to upload regularly. She talked about the benefits of eating raw vegan food, her work-out routine, and answered questions from her ever-growing fan base. In October 2016, she bought a one-way ticket to New Zealand. Travelling had been something that she always wanted to do. She did not have any plans for what she would do once she was in New Zealand. She just wanted to travel rather than going to school or having a job. She spent a few months there before moving to Australia, where she currently resides.

Draper has accumulated over five million views to date. Her most popular upload is ‘Jungle Room Tour 2016’ (818 thousand views).

Draper’s favourite book of all time is ‘The Catcher in the Rye’ by J. D. Salinger. She has read the story several times and considers Holden Caulfield, the primary protagonist of the story, to be “her love”. She also likes the Harry Potter series by J. K. Rowling.