Social media is pretty much the place you want to be at if you’re looking for something that can quickly go viral (in a good way).
Sometimes these things are planned while sometimes they just happen spontaneously.
For one user named Aaryn Whitely, her Twitter post became viral because of freckles. That is, she claimed that every woman has a freckle at the center of their wrist. For evidence, she posted a photo of her own wrist and accompanied it with photos of the wrists of her own friends as well.
Since it’s so easy to just take a pen and put on a dot on the wrist or perhaps have something tattooed, she asked the Twitterverse if there’s anything to what she’s claiming. Since then, women from around the world have started participating in what’s being called the “freckle challenge.” One user, named Cstar, even went so far as to write in her own post: “Every girl has a freckle on their right wrist and or left boob.”
A slew of female users has now posted pictures of their own wrists (though none of boobs) purportedly showing the aforementioned freckles. Whether or not they’re really freckles or creatively added ink dots, it’s still a clear example of enough people interested enough to participate that the whole activity becomes viral.
If you’re interested in how freckles are seen medically, they are basically concentrated melanized cells compacted in small clusters just under the skin’s epidermis. Exposure to sunlight makes them darker and thus more visible.
This is because ultraviolet light (which sunlight contains a lot of) stimulates melanocytes (which produce pigmentation) to manufacture more melanin. This is why freckles sometimes pale or fades during winter but darken once summer rolls in.
As to why freckles grow on wrists, one’s face, hands, and upper arms are the body parts that are most likely and frequently exposed to sunlight. And that would explain why freckles are most likely to develop in these areas more than anywhere else in the body.
As to why freckles show up in the middle of the wrists of women, it’s anyone’s guess. It could have something to do with the genetic makeup of women that controls where in the body freckles show up (the same way fat distribution in the body differs between men and women). But that’s immaterial because the important thing is, people certainly had fun sharing their pics on Twitter!
Check out some of the other women who shared photos of their own freckles:
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