How to live with a birthmark

It inspires admiration and alarm in equal measure, but one writer loves her ‘nature’s tattoo’

There is something about myself that I am barely aware of, yet it is, I am reliably informed, the first thing that people take in about me. Not my charming personality, alas, nor my dancing green eyes, but my congenital melanocytic naevus, the flower-shaped birthmark that lurks to the right of my throat.

The congenital melanocytic naevus (a name that translates as “a blackish mole one was born with”), is sometimes known as the “giant hairy nevus”. But let’s scotch that myth from the start. My birthmark is hairless, despite my brothers’ periodic cries of: “Burn the witch!”

The worst that can be said of it is that it’s a bit knobbly. Once, during a health screening, I beheld a massively magnified image of it resembling some terrifying postapocalyptic landscape. In the flesh it is a good deal less sinister, cheery even: frilly, conker-coloured, a diminutive brown cloud.

Medically my birthmark is of no particular interest. It is slightly more sensitive than “normal” skin, to the extent that catching or scratching it is a rather sweary business.

Despite dinner party warnings from amateur dermatologists, specialists assure me that my mark is least likely of all my moles to become cancerous (a relief, as I once turned it moss green through overeager application of sun block). Ferreting about the internet, I learn that a select 1 per cent of the population is blessed with such cocoa smatterings.

I also discover that I have been short-changed on the name front. What hope congenital melanocytic naevus compared with the birthmark exotica that is stork bite, angel’s kiss, port-wine, strawberry or Mongolian blue spot?

Elvis Presley’s was diamond-shaped

Still, I am in good company. Richard Gere, Tina Turner, Christina Aguilera and Catherine Zeta-Jones are all reported to boast mottling of some sort. The diamond-shaped birthmark in Elvis Presley’s groin was seen by more excitable enthusiasts of The King as a sign that he was, in fact, our Lord, or a manifestation of the divine. Mikhail Gorbachev’s prominent port-wine stain was cited as a fulfilment of Nostradamus’s prophecy that the last czar would be one “Michael the Marked”, after which the end would be nigh.

Perhaps Gorby suffers from my own body dysmorphia regarding the location of his florid archipelago? Used to seeing my mark only in mirrors, I am never quite certain of its location, stage left or right. As an adult, I would not be able to answer without investigation.

As a child, I was more birthmark conscious, trusting it might indicate that I was heir to some minor European throne. About 2cm broad and 3cm high, it seemed larger in the days when I was smaller, when adults shook their heads and declared its presence a pity.

For there is still a good deal of superstition about birthmarks. Where science may not be certain of why some people get them, so folklore has filled the vacuum. The myths are legion. My personal favourite is that these splotches represent the site of death in a former life (my own must have been particularly agonising, resting, as it does, on my collarbone). And there is a great deal of loose talk about being touched by good or evil, the latter not least.

The most prolific superstitions hold the mother’s thoughts or actions during pregnancy responsible, known in the trade as “maternal impression” theory. These follow the same warped logic as the tale about Elephant Man Joseph Merrick’s mother being frightened by said animal during his gestation, thus causing his affliction.

In Italian, birthmarks are voglie, in Spanish antojos and in Arabic wiham, all meaning “wishes”. Port-wine marks are associated with cravings for the vino, strawberry birthmarks with berries, jam or beetroot. Hailing not far from Bournville, my mark was lent a parochial, Cadburyian meaning: “Your mother ate too much chocolate”, accompanied by much brandishing of choppy finger.

In parts of Eastern Europe and Thailand, it may be thought that touching a birthmark bearer brings good fortune. But, still, the prevailing view tends to be that voiced in Shakespeare’s King John, that it is an undesirable thing to be “Full of unpleasing blots and sightless stains,/ . . .Patch’d with foul moles and eye-offending marks”. So while I may rather like my blot, the attention it brings can be unsettling.

Asian men are especially solicitous: does it hurt, have I always had it, what does it mean? Children wince, recoil, until I soothe them by explaining that it is perfectly all right, and that they can touch it if they like (they don’t).

But, then, the admiration it draws can also be disarming. A Jamaican woman told me that I “must have some black” in me (perhaps, but I don’t believe this to be the sign).

More than one chap has taken a rather fetishistic fancy to it. A Valentine celebrated my “pied beauty” after the Gerard Manley Hopkins poem (“Glory be to God for dappled things/ For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow...” Er, cheers).

A friend famously reduced the leader department at The Times to silence (not a frequent occurrence, at least when I worked there), when she suggested that I tattoo petals around my corker to transform it into a sunflower. But, then, why would I bestow a tattoo on myself when nature has provided me with such a resplendent one? I would no more dream of having it removed. And I hope that, had my naevus been on my face, I would have felt similarly fond of it. After all, even the most flawless diamond boasts its birthmark.

Skin deep

The medical term for a birthmark is naevus. Birthmarks are formed before or shortly after birth when there is abnormal cell development in the skin. Many of the most common types are caused by abnormalities of the small blood vessels running through the skin, causing an accumulation of blood in localised areas. These are called vascular birthmarks and include stork marks (flat pink areas on the neck that disappear in months), strawberry naevi (raised red areas which fade by age 6, also known as infantile haemangiomas) and port-wine stains (permanent flat and purple marks).

The other type of birthmark is a melanocytic naevus, which is mole-like and caused when a large number of pigment-producing skin cells grow in one area.

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