Freckle juice

Do you have freckles?

Not on  your arms or back or right ear lobe.  Freckles on your face.  Do you have those? 

If your answer is "no", well, you are the person I would have wanted to have been back in elementary school.  You could have had a rhinoceros horn growing out of your left arm pit and not a single tooth, but, if you had no freckles on your face, I still would have wanted to have been you. 

My hair is dark brown, my eyes are blue and my skin is fair.  In the summer, my skin will tan, but, in general, I have fair skin that freckles.  I hated that!  Barbie and Skipper didn't have freckles!

I distinctly remember tapping a girl on the shoulder while I was behind her in the water line in the second grade to ask her if she liked her freckles.  I don't remember what she said.  It was probably something along the lines of "Why don't you just go and stick your head in the toilet!", but I'm not sure.  Can't be certain.

I remember staring at pictures of myself as a three-year-old and wondering why I couldn't have that skin again.

I didn't care that I looked like a mini-hooker on an ugly couch,
I was just happy I didn't have freckles.

Maybe my aversion to them was because they could be counted.  When I would visit my aunt and uncle in Florida, my uncle would say to me, "Hey Kel-Kel, let me count those freckles.  You know you get a new freckle every time you kiss a boy.  Let me see how you have there!"  I was in elementary school and I would get SO embarrassed by his freckle counting bit.  I would have rather eaten a bowl of Molten Hot Lava Oatmeal  for breakfast than have my freckles counted.

You can only imagine how eager I was to read Freckle Juice by Judy Blume when I saw it in the my elementary school's library.  I thought there was going to be a recipe to a secret potion that would erase my freckles forever!  No such luck.  Apparently, Andrew, the main character, wanted freckles like Nicky Lane.  He wanted them so his dirt would mix in with his freckles and his mother wouldn't make him take a bath as often.  (I thought I might as well have been Pig-Pen or something.)  The Freckle Juice containing grape juice, vinegar, mustard, mayonnaise, juice from one lemon, salt & pepper, ketchup, oil oil and a speck of onion was actually meant to give you freckles, dagnabbit.  How was that supposed to help me?  I would have drank that Freckle Juice and happily taken multiple trips to the ER for a routine stomach pumping if I thought it was going to get rid of my freckles.

Did anyone ever turn Pig-Pen's mom into CPS?
Source: Paperback Swap

I never really stopped looking for ways to get rid of them while I was living at home.  I remember seeing creams my mom had that were supposed to erase age spots on her hands.  I'd slather that expensive mess all over my face, rinse and then stare into the mirror.

Nothing changed.

Maybe if the internet had been around then, I would have erased my freckles forever.  Is there anything better than that?  Weren't all things good hinging on getting rid of freckles??   If the internet had been around then, I probably would have tapped my mom on the shoulder and handed her this grocery list:

-lemon juice
-SOUR MILK
-onion
-Big League chew
-cucumber
-Tiger Beat magazine
-parsley juice
-honey
-papaya juice
-new Barbie
-Guess jeans
-Liz Claiborne perfume
-Kirk Cameron himself

Apparently, some of these food ingredients can be spread individually or together all over your face to rid it of freckles.  Apparently, there are people out there that want you to turn your face into a salad bar.

(Did you happen to notice "sour milk"?  Someone wants me to pour sour milk on my face so I can get rid of my freckles.  Someone wants me to dip my face in a sour milk smoothie.  Someone wants me to smell like an old, rotting refrigerator with curdled milk in it.)

Maybe if the internet had been around then, I would have waited a minute before handing my mom that grocery list, because I would have discovered these celebrities with freckles from Bella Sugar and would have realized that I didn't need to erase anything.

Emma Watson

Giselle Bundchen

Julianne Moore

Bar Rafaeli

Megan Fox

I bet none of them poured sour milk on their faces.  If they were handed a freckle juice that removed them forever, I bet they'd pour it down the drain.  Freckled faces are beautiful, too!  (Take that, Barbie!)

We could take a whole other tangent here and talk about women in media, the emphasis on beauty and perfection in the looks department and how all of this negatively affects young girls (Ahem...Toddlers & Tiaras) and how I'm not helping anything here by showing two of Leonardo DiCaprio's former girlfriends, one of which is a Victoria Secret model, but I'll stop here.

I want to hear from you.

Did you ever feel insecure about something like I did when you were younger that you now feel very differently about?