Talk:Freckle

Deleted Vandalism
Found some vandalism, I deleted it. Yes, anonymous anti-vandals... ON THE INTERNET!! What next? Honest politicians? Heh. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 146.151.49.74 (talk) 11:34, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

mt DNA shows no Neanderthal connection
I cut this paragraph and reference from the article:

The talented photographer Claus Lillevang, who comes from Denmark, has made this fantastic photo series about freckles. See the pictures about freckles.

I cut the paragraph because genetic comparisons of human and Neanderthal mitchondrial DNA show no evidence of genetic flow between H. sapiens and H. neanderthalensis (Serre et al. No evidence of Neandertal mtDNA contribution to early modern humans. PLoS Biology 2:313–7 (2004)). So the claim about freckles is wrong. Gdr 10:52, 2004 Oct 14 (UTC)


 * From what i've read on the mtDNA results, the claim no gene flow at all is premature. For one thing, mtDNA would (except in (very?) rare cases) show no gene flow to you from your father. For another, the commonly cited "24 mutations between Neanderthal-modern, compared to max 22 intra-modern" isn't the whole story; the minimum Neanderthal-modern is reported to be actually 13.


 * I'm not saying there was gene flow, but I don't see how these mtDNA results are anywhere near a proof of absence. If someone can find a non-dead link to a reference, particularly with more details on the genetic dating (e.g. if the studies indicate that the freckle gene entered the H. sapiens gene pool 50,000 years ago, that speaks well for it not being from an ancestor further back). --Anomie 23:13, 11 July 2005 (UTC)


 * Could you be more specific on this infamous 'Celtic Gene'? I have never heard of it before, I have however seen freckles in people from Asian, Latin American and African descent. Did this celtic gene spread everywhere then?

I thought this was an excellent point, but not something that belongs in the article, so I'm going to remove it and leave it on talk. fuddlemark (fuddle me!) 13:52, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

There no such thing as "Celtic genes" in the way you are describing it. 167.1.176.4 (talk) 07:57, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

"...Night without stars"
The previous version attributed the "...night without stars" quote to Stephen Majercik, but Googling it turned up other attributions to Eric Machmer, Anon, Irish proverb, and so forth. So I have changed the attribution to "unknown," until decisive evidence can be produced for who originated this phrase. --Groggy Dice 00:29, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

Freckle
Even if you do find a source, as anyone can post anything they want online, there is no such thing as a freckle fetish. What's next? If I like blondes, do I have a blonde fetish? See my point? -RiverHockey 19:05, 22 December 2006 (UTC)
 * I am sure you can have a fetish for anything. Whether it is notable or not depends on many things though. Oh and a blonde fetish is quite common I think :) Lethaniol 19:13, 22 December 2006 (UTC)
 * RiverHockey: Your opinion (no doubt backed with a PhD in Psychology, and many by years of research into sexual fetishes) aside; if I find a citation from a WP:RS, I will restore the information. You can remove it if you wish; but I'll warn you that removing properly cited information from an article is a bad, bad thing, and could lead to other bad, bad things. Why are you even leaving this comment here, and not on the talk page for the article? It seems rather uncivil to me. So please stop.


 * Lethaniol: A blonde fetish, I believe, is called being "me". Har. -- weirdoactor tundefinedc 19:25, 22 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Freckles, hair color, etc. is a sexual preference, whips, etc. and other wierd stuff is fetish.... Your resource would mean nothing. I can make 15 web sites in the next hour citing that everyone in Pittsburgh has a freckle fetish. But that does not make it true..... - RiverHockey 19:47, 22 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Look I do not really want to get dragged in here but I think you may want (both) to read up about these issues at WP:CITE, WP:VER and in particular Reliable sources. Even if a website says X, it should be a reliable source before being used. If a reliable source says that there is a Y fetish in Z, then it can be used if appropriate to the argument/article.


 * Also, though I know little of psychology - definitions of fetish include -


 * A condition in which arousal and/or sexual gratification is attained through inanimate objects (shoes, pantyhose) or non-sexual body parts (feet, hair). Is considered a problem when the object is needed in order to obtain arousal or gratification and the individual can not can not complete a sexual act without this object present.


 * So a body part - e.g. skin condition or hair colour may fall under these terms. A fetish can be for "normal" stuff but taken to a severe degree. A fetish may not just be for "weird".


 * According to wikipedia's definition itself, a fetish is defined as a non-human/innanimate object/idea that causes sexual attraction. Ie: non-sexual body parts are not fetishes by definition but are loosely considered fetishes in speech. Anyway I don't wish to dwell on this issue any further. -RiverHockey 20:54, 23 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Sorry Weirdoactor for butting in here, tell me to bug off if you like, but I found this quite an interesting argument. Talking about this on the talk page of the article may be a good idea - could cut paste the discussions from here. Cheers Lethaniol 23:11, 22 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Right have tracked down the article of concern - that being Freckle. I wish people when discussing things would make it explicit what article they are talking about - it was not obvious. Well Weirdoactor - you could not find a RS so you removed the information - good job - well done. Personally I have a red head fetish so I will go over to that article now and add the information - ah just kidding :) Lethaniol 23:33, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

There is, I have seen photos of people going darker. Just google melanin supplements etc. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.156.27.120 (talk) 13:30, 21 July 2009 (UTC) There is, I have seen photos of people going darker. Just google melanin supplements etc. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.156.27.120 (talk) 13:30, 21 July 2009 (UTC)   —Preceding unsigned comment added by Insoct (talk • contribs)

Freckle v. mole
Distinction not provided in article. —SlamDiego&#8592;T 09:46, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

Genetics of Freckles
Freckling is a dominant trait? I am 100% sure my parents are my parents, and neither one has freckles. Gene suppression? Also, they can occur in Asian populations. Lucy Liu, for example. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Special:Contributions/ (talk)


 * It doesn't matter if your parents themselves had freckles. The gene that causes freckles merely was not expressed in them, but they were still carrying the gene. It just means that one of the recessive genes -- the ones that don't give people freckles -- won. Since you are asking about this saying that your parents don't have freckles, I'm assuming that you do (you never actually said if you do or not) -- this means that in your case the dominant gene won. What I'm trying to say is that just because a gene is dominant doesn't mean that it will show up in every single generation -- otherwise members of a single family would look uncannily alike -- it just means that it's more likely to "win".
 * If you want to learn more about it, do some research on Mendel. He did some experiments with pea plants -- yes, pea plants. He had two types of pea plants: tall ones which, if bred together, always yielded tall offspring; and short ones which, if bred together, always yielded short offspring. He tried breeding tall ones with short ones, expecting medium ones. However, all the offspring were tall. When he tried breeding these plants with short ones, three quarters were tall and one quarter were short. Mendel eventually came up with the concept of "dominant" and "recessive" genes. All the bean plants which were bred from tall and short plants had genes for both tallness and shortness in them, but there was never a compromise between the two -- one or the other won. This means that the tall plants had genes for shortness in them, and could potentially have some short offspring, and vice versa for the short plants.
 * Long story short: Your parents not having freckles is no indication whatsoever that freckles aren't a dominant trait (Lol, I know I talk a lot...can't help myself...).
 * And I love Lucy Liu's freckles, precisely because she is Asian. I think she's the only Asian person I've ever seen who has freckles. Well...I actually don't really know what she herself looks like, but I've seen her in Futurama... Lol...
 * Btw, I got my info about the pea plants and such in a book called Science Matters: Achieving Scientific Literacy by Robert M. Hazen and James Trefil. 72.39.148.218 (talk) 03:08, 15 June 2008 (UTC)


 * It's not actually like the genes are competing with each other, really. If you have two different alleles of the same gene then both are expressed. Mendelian dominance merely describes the situation where the existence of only allele leads to a particular phenotype. This is best explained by reading the article on how blood type works. Anyway, I think the article said that a particular gene codes for a particular receptor and that the presence of that receptor is only one factor leading to having freckles. No single gene codes for freckles I guess.Dangles1989 (talk) 23:37, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

List of people ...
The list of people known for their freckles is nonsense. Wikipedia is not a collection of lists, and it isn't a gossip / glammagazine site either. Deleted as such. --Soetermans 14:41, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia is a source of information. We; people with the condition, come on here to find things out about them. Many of us have been bullied for them, spend countless amounts of money on creams to get rid of them. When you go to get a skin treatment they offer options for chemical treatments to get rid of them.

Why would you remove that? You can just choose not to expand it. I don't know if we are in the millions but we are in the thousands; people who have been bullied for our freckles.

Notable people with the condition is a very common list on wikipedia and is available for so many other things - why then would you remove it for this one?

Removing useful and well sourced information from Wikipedia to me seems against wikipedias core values of providing information.

A person who doesn't want to read that page doesn't have to expand it and it would have made at least me feel better and have given me the information I came here for. AliceF (talk) 15:33, 13 April 2018 (UTC)

Sunscreen Cancer Debate
This is not a practicle place to put the debate about the dangers of sunscreen. Please leave it out of the freckle article. When the consensus on the sunscreen article changes to call it a danger, then it might be appropriate to add a section about it's dangers here.209.172.11.17 (talk) 16:48, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

Freckles in culture
I've removed this section: reasons as follows Pippi Longstocking (a childrens book by Astrid Lindgren) had freckles. When an adult friend of hers - who worked in a pharmacy - suggested her to remove the freckles with bleach Pippi Longstocking answered full of self esteem that she would never do anything to remove her freckles, but if a medicine came out that could increase the number of freckles she would be interested. The pharmacist was stunned by this display of self esteem and courage.

This is rather a lot of detail, and seems more or less trivia. This small episode is intended to teach children that you don't have to be like the others. Instead, you can be proud of the small differences that make each person unique.

This is OR, as far as I can see. Comparable to the message that J.K. Rowling was sending out with the redheaded Weasley family. This is not a coherent sentence, and I can't quite work out what it means. Either way, it's trivia.

On Lost (TV series) The character James "Sawyer" Ford nicknamed Kate Austen "Freckles". I confess I don't know the series, but if the character is generally knows as "Freckles" then it might be appropriate to have a disambiguation link "for the Lost character, see..."

Pseudomonas(talk) 21:10, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

As a person who came on here to find out if theyd come back if I caused serious injury to my skin, I came on here to suggest maybe a page on cultural significance be added to the page. Not because I want it but because I know I need it, and I know people like me need it. Freckles do carry a large cultural significance. They signify youth or naivity, the cultural context gives us an understanding of what it all means. Science can give us facts but it can't help us make sense of what we think of them, what other people think of them and why we think those things. This part here that I read was what I came onto this Wikipedia page for, specifically.

If they had no cultural significance then why do girls tattoo them on, spend hours drawing the on, why do others do irrepairable damage to their skin to remove them? If the cultural context didn't matter, millions of people around the world wouldn't also do these things.

I'm not Wikipedia savvy enough to add this back, but I hope someone who is will. AliceF (talk) 15:19, 13 April 2018 (UTC)

sunscreen and melanoma
Even the medical doctors agree nowadays that protective clothing should be preferred. Awareness of the discussion about the safety of sunscreens is a good thing. Those who are affected should know that there is a discussion about the safety of sunscreen in the scientific literature.Gerriet42 (talk) 17:47, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Liver spots subsection
I think the section on liver spots should either be removed or completely reworked, since they are almost completely different phenomena. (D.c.camero (talk) 23:36, 23 August 2008 (UTC))

freckled women
what is this do we have to see these girls on the web, :( —Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.210.165.89 (talk) 17:50, 3 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Kids today. You know, back in my day when we wanted to troll we put some effort into it. I remember reading USENET and coming across this diatribe of racist propaganda cross-posted to a number of groups. Now that, that was hundreds of lines long, spell-checked and obviously had undergone at least cursory editing. Now that - THAT is good trolling. It pissed off everyone, myself included. I still remember it years later. You know why? Because back in my day, we cared about our work. We took pride in our trolling. Today, though? This is what passes for a troll nowadays. An uncapitalized, ten-second abortion of a jab at freckled people. It's not even backed up with a "lol ugly". Christ, what is the Web coming to? I don't know. I just don't know. 216.240.13.14 (talk) 17:09, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

perception as a defect
I have noticed that most people I know shun freckles and view them as unattractive. Are freckles a biological sign of health problems, like in the case of obesity, and the loath twards them is built in in humans? Because if I'm not mistaking, there was no culture in history that actually liked freckles. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.70.96.229 (talk) 14:00, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

I'm guessing you didn't read the article. I'll leave this for a day or two and then remove it. Beach drifter (talk) 03:22, 23 July 2009 (UTC) It's true. Red hair and freckles were considered curses in most cultures, so I guess that red hair is actually a sign of poor genetic material, like albinism. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.228.109.150 (talk) 23:48, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

Freckles are not a sign of health problems, only a mass of melanin that darkens with sun exposure. People with freckles have less melanin in other areas of the skin. In fair-skinned people, whether they have freckles or not, they are more likely to develop UV-related skin conditions/ cancer. Freckles are not exclusive to fair-skinned people. I have seen freckles in dark-skinned people and Asian people, and because of the darker skin tones, they are protected better than fair-skinned people from the harmful rays of the sun and it's affects, independent of the fact they have freckles. Although I am somewhat disturbed by the mention that freckles are unattractive, I am intrigued (and agree with) the idea that some health factors actually define the scale of natural attraction to a mate. I have also read scientific theory that the attractiveness of men to blond-haired women is possibly due to the rarity of the blond gene in the gene pool. If that is the case, then wouldn't the rarity of freckles be cause for better rate of attraction among the opposite sex? Point is, I do not think freckles alone cause a person to be unattractive. Just as art is sometimes attractive because of it's individual and unique beauty. It is sometimes the over-all culmination of a variety of traits that cause an individual to be classified as attractive or not, but is unique to each individual. Also, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. As you have probably already guessed, I do have freckles. Only for strength in my argument will I also input: Even with freckles, I most often get more comments and attention from individuals of the opposite sex than do the non-freckled individuals who may be in my group, even if they are blond, which I am not. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.215.179.151 (talk) 05:22, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

Talk page archiving
Is it OK to set up automatic archiving for sections over (say) six months old? Not that the talk page is huge, but there's a lot of stale sections, and I think that's contributing to it being used as a forum. Pseudomonas(talk) 11:32, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

more info
hey i am doing my speech on freckles and it is due next week, so i need more information and fast

please tell me about why the freckle is called the freckle and other facts about freckles. THANKS —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.141.193.91 (talk) 02:09, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

"Freckles can be found on anyone no matter their genetic background" - citation needed
I read the source attached to that sentence and it doesn't make that claim (self-identified African descent in Jamaica doesn't preclude unknown European ancestors). There needs to be a source that freckles can be found in all ethnic groups across the world to make this claim. Maybe the dubious template is more appropriate.

I came here with these questions in mind:
 * Do Yamato people have freckles naturally or is it a trait from WWII fraternization?
 * Do the San people have freckles naturally?
 * Are Lucy Lui's freckles proof she has British ancestors from Shanghai's history or can Han Chinese, and other Chinese ethnic groups, have freckles?

I'm lead to this question:
 * Is the pheomelanin MC1R variant not found in any particular ethnic group(s)?
 * Various internet searches are turning up evidence for red hair in places around the globe but not all areas and red hair is not equivalent to having freckles. This needs someone with better base knowledge and search abilities to get an answer. 97.85.173.38 (talk) 08:23, 9 January 2015 (UTC)

Thanks to the anonIP who added this edit clarifying this part of the article 97.85.173.38 (talk) 15:53, 9 April 2015 (UTC)