Oftentimes, people ask my about the small mark on the right side of my bottom lip.
Sometimes it’s the guy bagging my groceries, other times it’s just a curious friend, harmlessly asking if it’s a scar or just a birthmark. People have asked me this question so frequently that I began making up wild stories about how I got it.
I got into a bar fight, if you must know. And yeah, you should see the other guy.
Actually, I was dancing on the bar in Kilroy’s and I fell on the bartender, busting my lip open. I left bloodstains all over his shirt. No, they did not kick me out.
Just kidding. An IU squirrel suddenly came out of nowhere one day and attacked me. I’d been eating peanuts, and it wanted some.
All right, so those were slight fabrications. Though my scar was simply the result of a playground incident in the fourth grade, I have to keep things interesting somehow.
Less often, people will also ask me if I’ve ever thought of getting it removed. To which I promptly reply, “Never.”
While getting my makeup done by a makeup artist at MAC with a friend, the woman kept giving me tips on how to best hide my scar with lipstick. I remember her saying a nice light rose will make that mark disappear. No one will ever notice it.
If only I cared. It’s pretty noticeable, but most of the time, I just forget it’s even there.
In fact, I love my scar. It makes me stand out, even though my red hair probably does that enough already. In a weird way, it gives me a confidence that cannot be mimicked by a cute outfit or killer shoes.
It also makes me look tough, which is a quality I usually lack with my petite and oftentimes quiet demeanor. It says, “Hey man, don’t mess with me.”
Trying to cover up my scar would be a waste of energy. And getting it removed would be a waste of money and time.
Even if it were a birthmark, my mentality about it would remain the same. We undervalue our individuality, even if it’s something as small as a birthmark or a scar.
In the most recent cycle of “America’s Next Top Model,” contestant Chantelle Brown-Young has vitiligo, a chronic skin disease that causes portions of the skin to lose its ?pigment.
Chantelle is a beautiful model, yet she would use her condition as a crutch, oftentimes complaining that the other contestants distanced themselves from her because of her skin disorder.
I found her modeling to be rather mediocre and her personality an atrocity. But at the end of the day, she still embraced her skin disorder, which I cannot imagine to be an easy task. And if Tyra Banks “discovers” you and invites you to compete in her show, I’d say you’re pretty special.
“I just decided I’m going to tell myself that I am beautiful and this is how I may be for the rest of my life,” Brown-Young told New York Post. “I need to accept it, embrace it and enjoy it.”
After her elimination from the show, she became the face of the Spanish clothing brand Desigual for its fall campaign. She is a self-proclaimed “vitiligo ?spokesmodel.”
Unlike my scar, Brown-Young cannot change or hide her skin disorder.
But she does have the potential to change the modeling industry’s definition of beauty. And that is so much bigger. I just hope she never signs a contract with Dove.
nrowthor@indiana.edu
