Cindy Crawford Says She Once 'Hated' Having a Beauty Mark: 'My Sisters Called It an Ugly Mark'
Everyone wants what they don’t have — even world-famous supermodels!
On Monday, Cindy Crawford joined longtime friend Naomi Campbell for the debut episode of her No Filter with Naomi YouTube series, where the mom of two reveals she “used to hate” her beauty mark (before Campbell admits she’s always wanted one!).
During the nearly hour-long interview, Campbell, 49, asks Crawford, 54, if the now-iconic mole above her lip was airbrushed away in the early days of her modeling career.
“I did a British Vogue cover, I think with [fashion photographer] David Bailey, before I did an American Vogue cover. And on the British Vogue cover, they retouched it out,” Crawford, who shares 18-year-old daughter Kaia and 20-year-old son Presley with husband Rande Gerber, shares. “So there is a cover of me out there with no mole, but it is me.”
On the 1987 magazine cover, Crawford appears sans her signature facial feature in a pastel yellow bandeau dress with cutouts and bow details. She looks on-trend for the decade with large pearl earrings, voluminous waves and natural, full brows.
Naomi/YouTube
When Campbell asks how that made her feel, the fashion icon responds: “As a kid, I hated having a beauty mark. My sisters called it an ‘ugly mark’.”
RELATED: Photos of Look-Alike Mother-Daughter Pair Kaia Gerber & Cindy Crawford Through the Years
Campbell quips: “I always wanted one so much! I wanted one. I used to put fake black eyeliner [marks] on my face.”
“Isn’t it like we always want what we don’t have?” Crawford says.
Adding, “When I went to my first modeling agency, they said I should remove it…my mother was like, ‘Okay, you can do that, but you don’t know what the scar will look like,” the legendary supermodel says. “You know what your beauty mark looks like’.”
Crawford — who got her start as a teenager in Chicago — opted not to remove the mole but says some makeup artist tried to cover it up anyways. “It’s not flat. You can’t cover up my mole otherwise it looks like a gigantic pimple or something,” she explains.
After shooting her first American Vogue cover in 1986, the star says she wasn’t sure whether or not the final images would be retouched. But when the issue finally hit stands with her beauty mark clearly visible, “it just wasn’t an issue anymore,” she tells Campbell. “If it’s good enough for [American] Vogue, it’s fine.”
Rose Hartman/Getty Images Cindy Crawford and Naomi Campbell in 1992
“I think it’s a perfection, not an imperfection,” Campbell replies. “It’s all part of making you and your persona. It’s part of your being.”
She continues: “I have a scar right here,” pointing to her upper lip, “They told me, in New York when I first got here at 16, ‘Oh, you’ve got to have plastic surgery’.” To which Campbell’s mom said, “Absolutely not, it’s not happening.”
“So many women have beauty marks,” Crawford says. “I think that when they saw me on the cover of Vogue or in a magazine with their beauty mark, it made them feel more comfortable about their own beauty marks. It made them remember me. It became the thing that set me apart in a weird way.”
“So often the thing that we [think] sets us apart and maybe we’re insecure about, it becomes the very thing that makes us stand out. I think that was a big lesson for me.”
