VIDEO: Twins of Different Colors!

Lucy and Maria Aylmer, twin sisters living in Gloucester, UK, don’t look anything alike! They almost don’t even look related! Lucy has pale skin and ginger hair, while Maria has darker skin and curly black hair. Their mother, Donna is half-Jamaican, and their father, Vince, is white.

According to Wikipedia, from a biological point of view, the differences in these fraternal or dizygotic twins from two biracial parents are not surprising. In humans, a relatively small number of genes are thought to be responsible for human skin color. Different alleles or gene variants code for differences in the melanin found within the skin. Within some groups are high frequencies of dark skin alleles, while others have high frequencies of light skin alleles, for example. The parents of such twins, who are typically both of mixed race, have a combination of alleles for light and dark skin in their genome.

Read the full story below, provided by shareably.net.

Babies born from biracial couples usually end up looking like a unique and even blend of their two parents. As it turns out, that’s not always the case. For sisters Lucy and Maria Aylmer living in Gloucester in the United Kingdom, the pair don’t even necessarily look related. Lucy has pale skin and ginger hair while Maria has darker skin and curly black hair. What makes their story even more interesting, however, is that the two girls are twins.

The Aylmer twins are both 18 years old and were born to their parents Donna and Vince. While Vince is white, their mother Donna is half-Jamaican. Although the pair aren’t identical twins, the differences between them are still more striking than average. Along with their unique situation have come some strange misunderstandings as well. In some cases, strangers have asked them how their situation was even possible. Lucy even says that for a while, she was bullied at school as a result of the differences. “They thought I was adopted,” she says.

Still, despite some comments, the girls mostly take it all in stride. And although they are twins, both are most definitely individual people with their own interests and hobbies. On one hand, Maria is very fashion-forward and a natural extrovert. Lucy, on the other hand, prefers to be more dressed down and is shy around new people. Above all though, time has taught them to appreciate their differences—and to cherish how unique their situation really is.

While the Aylmer twins’ story is ultimately just a portrait of two young women, their superficial differences call into question the way we see one another. Aside from being just a biological curiosity, the pair’s differing skin color reminds us just how arbitrary and ultimately unimportant it is to judge people based on what they look like.

Just as it took Lucy and Maria time to understand their own identities as individuals rather than twins, it has taken society a long time to move past judging one another based on surface appearances. If nothing else, the love and warmth between these two adorable sisters remains a gentle reminder to look a little deeper.

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