Do you ever get made fun of because you have pale skin?

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A carrier has the gene but does not exhibit the phenotype. I think that it applies to recessive and x- linked disordered. I'm not sure about dominant. I think in this case it's called reduced penetrance. Maybe a biology major here knows?
 
KristinaB said:
For my family - my mother is the only one to have it. So far, no one else at all. Mom started getting her patches after age 50. Her face is now kind of like a marble slab, mostly white, but some tan. Otherwise, she is totally white from the scalp to the tips of her toes. She ran into problems at work with people calling her a "freak of nature" and having her bosses put her into a closed office. Now, with all her other issues, I am the one to have to put on her sunscreen and make sure she covers up before we go out.
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What? I can't believe your mother's bosses.:shock:
 
deafskeptic said:
What? I can't believe your mother's bosses.:shock:
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She as working at a residential place run by the Carmelite Nuns. She was in charge of all the computer entry and copying as well as all of the ID cards for all of the resident's and employees. The residents were constantly questioning what her problem was. The bosses thought it would be better to hide her away. She quit shortly after that.
 
KristinaB said:
She as working at a residential place run by the Carmelite Nuns. She was in charge of all the computer entry and copying as well as all of the ID cards for all of the resident's and employees. The residents were constantly questioning what her problem was. The bosses thought it would be better to hide her away. She quit shortly after that.
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Damn, I don't blame her for quitting shortly after that.
 
KristinaB said:
For my family - my mother is the only one to have it. So far, no one else at all. Mom started getting her patches after age 50. Her face is now kind of like a marble slab, mostly white, but some tan. Otherwise, she is totally white from the scalp to the tips of her toes. She ran into problems at work with people calling her a "freak of nature" and having her bosses put her into a closed office. Now, with all her other issues, I am the one to have to put on her sunscreen and make sure she covers up before we go out.
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It sounds as if she has the more frequent type that is acquired in late adulthood. It is rare for it to be universal when acquired late, though. People will sometimes spontaneously re-pigment, too. My loss is universal over my skin, and I have a huge white streak where my hair naturally parts in the front. I'm certain that is the beginning of total loss of pigment in my hair. My cousins all have partial pigmentation with spots on their faces (the typical racoon type marking with pigment being lost in a mask shape around the eyes) and lesions on stressor points like knees and elbow.

Mine began when I was about 2 and fell and scraped a knee. After it healed, the pigment was gone, and the margins began spreading outward from there. Next spots began to appear on stressor points with margins spreading from the initial lesion. By 18, I had lost all pigment from the elbows down, and all pigment from the knees down. By 25, only pigment remained on my torso. After the birth of my son, the rest said bye-bye.

My brother's began the same as mine, but at around the age of 12, he started to spontaneously re-pigment, and as an adult, retained only one lesion on his left knee and the same white streak I have in his hair. No one has ever been able to explain the difference in manifestation.
 
KristinaB said:
She as working at a residential place run by the Carmelite Nuns. She was in charge of all the computer entry and copying as well as all of the ID cards for all of the resident's and employees. The residents were constantly questioning what her problem was. The bosses thought it would be better to hide her away. She quit shortly after that.
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So, if the residents questioned, explain! Hide her away is unnacceptable. For God's sake, it isn't like we have open sores or something! It is a patch of skin with no pigment!

I was questioned quite a bit, as well. Most people thought perhaps I had suffered from a scalding or a burn of some type. But a vitiligo lesion doesn't even resemble a burn. It is a normal looking patch of skin with no pigment. The only thing that can distinquish it from normal skin is the color.
 
jillio said:
It sounds as if she has the more frequent type that is acquired in late adulthood. It is rare for it to be universal when acquired late, though. People will sometimes spontaneously re-pigment, too. My loss is universal over my skin, and I have a huge white streak where my hair naturally parts in the front. I'm certain that is the beginning of total loss of pigment in my hair. My cousins all have partial pigmentation with spots on their faces (the typical racoon type marking with pigment being lost in a mask shape around the eyes) and lesions on stressor points like knees and elbow.

Mine began when I was about 2 and fell and scraped a knee. After it healed, the pigment was gone, and the margins began spreading outward from there. Next spots began to appear on stressor points with margins spreading from the initial lesion. By 18, I had lost all pigment from the elbows down, and all pigment from the knees down. By 25, only pigment remained on my torso. After the birth of my son, the rest said bye-bye.

My brother's began the same as mine, but at around the age of 12, he started to spontaneously re-pigment, and as an adult, retained only one lesion on his left knee and the same white streak I have in his hair. No one has ever been able to explain the difference in manifestation.
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Yeah - I mentioned the other day that mom's hair is totally white. She lost all the pigmentation in her hair early on when this started.
 
My vitiligo showed up when I was ten. I had white spots on my joints; knees, ankles, elbows, finger joints. The spots would change a little through the years... but in my 20's it looked like they were actually filling in. I had my son when I was 31, and within a few years I had the eye spots and big new patches all over. This is strange, but the areolas around my nipples even faded to almost nothing!

On the plus side, after I had my son my hair went curly.
 
mbrek said:
My vitiligo showed up when I was ten. I had white spots on my joints; knees, ankles, elbows, finger joints. The spots would change a little through the years... but in my 20's it looked like they were actually filling in. I had my son when I was 31, and within a few years I had the eye spots and big new patches all over. This is strange, but the areolas around my nipples even faded to almost nothing!

On the plus side, after I had my son my hair went curly.
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Pregnancy appears to trigger the autoimmune response in vitiligo. That is when The remainder of my pigment went bye-bye, too. Funny, my son was born when I was 31, as well. Are you my evil twin?:giggle:
 
jillio said:
Pregnancy appears to trigger the autoimmune response in vitiligo. That is when The remainder of my pigment went bye-bye, too. Funny, my son was born when I was 31, as well. Are you my evil twin?:giggle:
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I must be!!! How old is your son? If you tell me he is very mentally impaired (like mine) - I'm going to freak out.
 
I have people make comments all the time about how pale I am and I can't stand it. Especially because I live in a place that rains a lot so there isn't a lot of sun anyway to get tan from. I can't stand having tan lines and I don't see what is so terrible about being pale. I just can't stand other people's need to make comments about it especially because I don't want to tan and get wrinkles and skin cancer later. It drives me crazy and I need to come up with a snappy comeback when people tell me I need to tan!
 
Lai6551 said:
I have people make comments all the time about how pale I am and I can't stand it. Especially because I live in a place that rains a lot so there isn't a lot of sun anyway to get tan from. I can't stand having tan lines and I don't see what is so terrible about being pale. I just can't stand other people's need to make comments about it especially because I don't want to tan and get wrinkles and skin cancer later. It drives me crazy and I need to come up with a snappy comeback when people tell me I need to tan!
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Tell them that they need to "lighten" up and leave ya alone.
 
"Tell me that again in 20 years when you have skin cancer and I don't."
 
Frisky Feline said:
which one is jewish you know jewsih is all over the country. just correct me but i always thought jewish but need to be specifc like polish, or czech or etc. know what i m saying ?
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You spell Jewish with a capital 'J" not a lower case 'j'.
 
I have the same plm with my friends thought I always get tan all the time when I was in h.s. But, now that they thought I still have. After years later I came back to see them again, they got confused how much I look different more like Casper, huh:confused: Nah, I don't have white skin :shock: not that's what u think I have:dunno2: I think I have fair skin to light complex :D
 
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