Cindy Crawford once ‘hated’ her beauty mark: ‘My sisters called it an ugly mark’

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Cindy Crawford‘s iconic mole may be her trademark — but growing up, the supermodel says, it was the bane of her existence. “As a kid, I hated having a beauty mark,” the 54-year-old fashion legend told Naomi Campbell during the debut episode of the latter’s “No Filter with Naomi” YouTube series. “My sisters called it …

Cindy Crawford‘s iconic mole may be her trademark — but growing up, the supermodel says, it was the bane of her existence.

“As a kid, I hated having a beauty mark,” the 54-year-old fashion legend told Naomi Campbell during the debut episode of the latter’s “No Filter with Naomi” YouTube series. “My sisters called it an ‘ugly mark.’”

“When I went to my first modeling agency, they said I should remove it,” Crawford continued. “My mother was like, ‘Okay, you can do that, but you don’t know what the scar will look like. You know what your beauty mark looks like.’”

While the brunette beauty opted to keep her beauty mark intact, she said that makeup artists used to try to camouflage it before shoots. “It’s not flat. You can’t cover up my mole, otherwise it looks like a gigantic pimple,” she pointed out.

And sometimes, magazines would airbrush the mark away altogether. “I did a British Vogue cover, I think with [photographer] David Bailey,” Crawford recalled. “And on the British Vogue cover, they retouched it out. So there is a cover of me out there with no mole, but it is me.”

The supermodel’s first American Vogue cover shoot in 1986 marked a turning point, however. “I didn’t know if they would leave it on or not, and then they did. And I think once it was on the cover of American Vogue then it wasn’t an issue anymore,” Crawford explained. “If it’s good enough for Vogue, it’s fine.”

Campbell, 49, said that she was always envious of her fellow supe’s distinguishing feature. “I always wanted one so much! I used to put black eyeliner [dots] on my face,” she said. “I think it’s a perfection, not an imperfection. It’s all part of making you and your persona. It’s part of your being.”

Crawford added that she hopes she’s helped others accept their own perceived flaws, too. “So many women have beauty marks,” she told Campbell. ” And I think that when they saw me on the cover of Vogue or in a magazine with my 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.”

Concluded the catwalker: “So often the thing that we [believe] 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.”