A girl, 18-year-old, suffering from a skin condition called dermatographia, which causes her skin to swell up when touched, is using her own body as a canvas for playful doodles.
Emma Aldenryd creates her own type of body art by running a pencil over her skin, which causes the lines she traces swelled up and redden. Then, leaving behind temporary doodles that fade after about 30 minutes. The teen discovered that she had dermatographia three years ago after a friend noticed that her arms turned red and swollen. Emma didn’t feel ashamed with her skin condition, instead, she decided to embrace it and use her ow body as an artistic medium and people love it.
I started by drawing quite random stuff like a bunch of words that came to mind on my arms,” Emma Aldenryd said. “I started by drawing quite random stuff like a bunch of words that came to mind on my arms.”
“People who I showed were really impressed, especially after they tried to do the same on their own skin but couldn’t do it,” she added.
“Lots of people question whether it hurts, but my dermatographia has never hurt. I did get some wild reactions and some people thought I was dying.”
Apart from itchiness of the skin, the rare skin condition hasn’t had any negative impact on her life, Emma said. Doctors prescribed antihistamines to mitigate the itchiness, but this also fixed the other symptoms, preventing her from doing her body art, so she stopped taking the medicine.
Emma draws various symbols on her body using a pencil, then shares the results of her dermatographia flareups on Instagram. Dermatographia basically is characterized by an allergic-like reaction where the body releases excessive amounts of histamine. Then causes capillaries in the skin to dilate and welts to appear.
Source: Oddity Central