This woman is proud of her birthmarks and wants you to be too
22/07/2016 - 06:12:25Back to Discover Home
Yulianna Yussef used to hide away because of comments from strangers about the dark marks she has grown up with all over her body.
However, the 22-year-old now has more than 22,000 followers on her Instagram – thanks to her fantastic style, jaw-droppingly beautiful travel snaps and, perhaps most importantly, her body-positive attitude.
As Yulianna notes herself, she was “born different” – she says her body is around 60% – 70% covered with marks and adds that when she’s stressed new ones can appear. But she has learnt to accept her skin.
Yulianna Yussef – Timeline | Facebook
“My marks – moles/spots – are caused by a mutation of body cells during embryonic development called congenital melanocytic nevus (CMN) – which only occurs in less than 1% of the population worldwide,” says Yulianna. “There’s no known method of prevention.
“When I was a child it affected me, and more in my teenage age. But almost one year ago I decided ‘I need to stop hiding and I can’t live like this any more’.
“So I just analysed my life, and started the process of learning how to accept my skin and start to love myself the way I am.”
While she originally started her Instagram account a couple of years ago just to document her travels, she now also uses it as a way to campaign about being proud of your body.
And that’s where the hashtag #bareyourbirthmark comes in. Yulianna, who is of Ukrainian-Lebanese descent but is now based in Warsaw, Poland, wanted it to motivate people with CMN to be proud of the way they were born.
She says she loves the response the project has had – people have started to take nice photos of their birthmarks and put them on their own social media. And Yulianna is “very proud of everyone” for that.
She adds: “They have started to put photos from the beach in a bikini and write their life stories aswell. People with CMN have become more confident and it’s amazing!”
Here are just some of the people who have been inspired to bear their own birthmarks on Instagram.
The thing is, Yulianna knows exactly what it’s like to grow up feeling self-conscious about your body, and says there was more pressure when she was a teenager.
She explains the attention her birthmarks have received in the past, and how it made her, and her friends, stand out.
“When I was 14/15-years-old I went with my friend to the beach, and of course people looked at me. Some old woman came to me with her advice how to remove it (her birthmarks) and some waitresses in the cafe said not nice words to me. So my friend just said to me ‘Oh my God, Julie! Walking with you is just like walking with a monkey.’
“I know that it was just words and in some way it was a joke. I wasn’t angry at her.
“But after that situation I sat at home all summer and only walked 1-2 hours in the evening when it was dark.”
But she says her family’s attitude helped her. “They didn’t pay any attention that I’m ‘special’ and ‘not a normal’ girl,” she says.
“I was just like everyone else, I was normal – I think it’s helped me a lot.”
While she used to be a manager in a restaurant business, a stewardess on a 5-star yacht and also trained in photography, Yulianna now works freelance, and spends all her free time trying to do something for the #bareyourbirthmark project.
“Because nowadays there are so many people who are obsessed about their appearance, I just want to show them that body is not everything and there are much more important things than how we look.”
