Growing up with freckles, lifestyle and wellness influencer Vic Styles heard all of the standard-issue insults about the tiny specks: “Your face looks dirty.” “Could I play connect-the-dots with them?”
Having classmates zero in on her face admittedly got under Styles’ skin. She absolutely hated her freckles for years, and since she couldn’t find a foundation that fully covered them, she just had to live with the spots. Now 38, Styles loves the constellation of freckles across her face. Instead of covering them, she looks for ways to accentuate them with her makeup.
“I let them live in their fullest glory, if you will, and I really love the summertime because they tend to pop a little bit more,” she told HuffPost. “I think that they’re probably one of the most favourite things about my face. I think they’re really unique.”
It doesn’t hurt that freckles are very much “in” these days. For a long time, freckles ― essentially sun spots caused by overactive pigment cells― were considered blemishes in need of coverage or even skin bleaching.
As early as 1910, Pond’s was advertising vanishing cream to banish freckles, while in later years, people started lasering them off. (Full disclosure from this freckled writer: As a preteen, I used concealer to try to cover every freckle I had ― a tedious process that probably made them look worse.)
Now, people draw on freckles with makeup ― or use broccoli as a stamp (inventive!) to achieve the specked effect. With the dorky Pippi Longstocking connotations long gone, some even get a freckled look with microblading ― a semipermanent tattooing process in which faux freckles are carefully pricked across the cheeks (or wherever else you want spots). Freckles are said to be Meghan Markle’s personal favourite feature.
How does Styles feel about them being trendy now?
“A part of me is a little upset, maybe jealous, that this trend happened now,” she said. “Why couldn’t freckles have been cool when I was 13, when maybe I wouldn’t have gotten made fun of and had an insecurity about them?”
But as a longtime freckle possessor, Styles is also hyped about the trend.
“It’s a fun way for people to reinvent themselves, to play with makeup to alter their looks in a nonpermanent way,” she said. “And I love the broccoli trend. I think it’s very creative. Who would have thought that broccoli could make the perfect freckles?”
She added, “All of us should just be celebrated and embraced for our differences, whether it’s freckles, birthmarks, alopecia, vitiligo — whatever it may be.”
Growing up, Crystal Hana Kim, a New York-based fiction writer whose latest work is The Stone Home, had a smattering of freckles on her nose and cheeks that would darken and spread every summer.
“As an adult, freckles cover every inch of my face, my arms, even my knees,” the author told HuffPost.
A Korean American, Kim said she received negative messages about her freckles from both cultures as a kid, leading to considerable insecurity.
“At home, my parents and elders would constantly worry about what to do with my ‘dirty’ face,” she said. “At school, the books I read described freckles as ugly, embarrassing, unsightly.”
Kim recalled that “in the fourth grade, after reading Anne of Green Gables ― a book which centres a redheaded, freckled girl who hates her complexion ― I spent a whole lunch period trying to wipe my freckles off in the bathroom.”
Nowadays, she embraces the collection of freckles across her face. She even wrote about how she grew to love them in an essay for Harper’s Bazaar earlier this year. Kim said her older son has started getting some freckles on his cheeks too, which brings her joy, not worry, because she’s taught him that they’re beautiful and not in need of masking.
“Overall, I’m amused by how differently I would have moved through the world if I had grown up now. Not only are freckles popular, but Korean culture is popular, too,” she said. “I think that the way we have expanded what is considered beautiful is a boon.”
Amil Barnes, the CEO of a creative branding agency in Washington, DC, also loves the freckles he sees on his kids’ faces (in his case, twin girls).
He didn’t feel similarly when his own freckles started popping up around middle school ― a prime time for schoolyard teasing. He also wore big bifocal glasses, which made the taunting “much worse.”
“Even as an African American, I am on the light skin or ‘pale’ side of skin tone,” he said. “So growing up light-skinned, wearing glasses and having freckles, I became the butt of a lot of jokes.”
Thanks to a popular Judy Blume book, Barnes was saddled with “Freckle Juice” as his go-to nickname at the private Catholic school he attended in Hillcrest Heights, Maryland.
“We had this thing called ‘joaning’ growing up ― basically, roasting someone ― and I was always the one singled out in a joaning session,” he said. “As I look back on it, it was funny and it did help me build character!”
These days, he’s mostly a fan of his freckles ― and for good reason.
“I sort of like them only because the females like them,” he joked. “As I get older, more are popping up on my face and I get complimented on them a lot. Whenever people say, ‘Aw, I wish I had freckles,’ my reply is: ‘Oh, I’ll sell them to you. I have plenty to go around.’”
