Melanoma chic: The $65 scam to look like a 90s sunburn victim

I am a big believer in both whimsy and the female gaze, which means I fully encourage everyone to have fun with makeup, and basically do whatever the hell you want with it. Except, that is, if what you want to do is apply fake freckles to your face. That is one make-up trend I absolutely cannot abide.

If you’ve somehow missed this movement, it is exactly what it sounds like: people are using make-up to apply freckles to their faces that they don’t actually have. The era of caking on foundation and concealer to fake a flawless complexion is long past; now it’s not just about letting your skin “breathe” and show through your makeup, but actually applying extra “imperfections” where there are none. Think old school Marilyn Monroe-style beauty marks or even Georgian-era patches, only browner and much more plentiful.

The fake freckle trend has been bubbling under the beauty surface for years, but has really exploded in popularity recently. Celebrities such as Billie Eilish, Hailey Bieber, Busy Philipps, and BlackPink’s Jennie have all been seen sporting extra spots on a number of occasions, and TikTok is full of tutorials on how to achieve the look. According to The Times, Google searches for “fake freckles make-up” rose more than 5000 per cent in the early months of this year.

So popular is a bespeckled face, there are even special freckle pens you can now buy to perfect your faux sprinkling of spots, which will set you back anywhere from $2.99 on Temu to $65 at Mecca. And if you’re really keen on the look, you can even get freckles tattooed on for a more “natural” — not to mention permanent — effect.

As someone who has approximately 10 freckles per square centimetre of skin on my face and body, you might think I’d be delighted that freckles are now in fashion. Finally, one (1) of my natural features is, in fact, considered beautiful! Unfortunately, it comes after a childhood of being teased for that very feature, not to mention an adolescence of feeling pressured to disguise it under layers of fake tan, and an adulthood of working to accept my skin despite constant messaging that it is in fact extremely flawed.

All of which is to say: my culture is not your costume! (For legal reasons, this is obviously an utterly unserious statement.)

How dare all these beautiful, creamy-complexioned celebrities and influencers try to invoke the power of freckles without having to endure the years of suffering that spawns them. I earned every single freckle on my skin through the lax sun safety of the late ’80s and early ’90s. Slip-Slop-Slap campaign be damned, I managed to get severely sunburnt in even the most dappled sunlight (seriously, one time I got badly burned while watching cricket, sitting in the full shade of a tree, having applied sunscreen and a hat). I spent many a childhood summer turning varying shades of red before shedding literal layers of skin and emerging just as pale as ever, only with more tiny brown spots of sun damage than before.

And what did all these hard, painful hours of freckle-building get me? Nothing but endless schoolyard taunts of being a “freckle fart from Kmart” (and this was before Kmart was “cool” i.e. had cultish Facebook groups dedicated to its every stock update).

While it’s lovely to think society has progressed to a point where freckles are now seen as beautiful instead of ugly, the fake freckle trend feels like just another instance of the beauty industry inventing new things they can sell to make bank on our insecurities.

Perhaps the most ironic part is that the supposed appeal of the freckled look is in its connotations of a natural, effortless, and youthful appearance, when really, the kind of freckles that are in fashion are the opposite of natural and effortless. Meanwhile freckles that are natural can actually only be achieved through sun exposure which, as we all know, is the sworn enemy of a youthful appearance.

There’s also the fact that it’s painfully obvious all these drawn-on freckles are fake. I’m just gonna come right out and say it: they look silly! Even sillier? Those stick-on sparkly freckles festival-goers (and, er, Taylor Swift) have been wearing. It pains me to say such a thing as a devotee of all things shiny, but it’s the truth.

Ultimately, the freckle trend will fade, and probably a lot sooner than the face tattoos people are getting to follow it. But the spots on my skin will not. And all I’ll be left with is a whole new round of beauty products that promise to cover them up.

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