Rebecca Heckard learned to hide before she learned to love herself.
She was born with piebaldism, a very rare genetic condition that prevents certain areas of the body from producing pigment. In her case, this resulted in a white streak in her hair and patches without pigment on her forehead, stomach, and legs. At school, her classmates gave her a nickname: “skunk”, the English word for zorrillo.
As a child, she used brown lipstick to cover her forehead. Then came makeup and layers of long hair, which worked like a curtain. She said she felt shy about her patches from ages 6 to 20. She asked to see a doctor to have them covered up, but was told there was nothing that could be done.
When she turned 21, the young New Yorker decided to stop hiding them. She put on a bikini for the first time and was photographed in a shoot designed to encourage others to accept their differences.
Today, she is a model and studies communications. The nickname that once made her hide now accompanies photos in which her skin is shown exactly as it is.