Twins With Contrasting Skin Tones Have Had To Verify They're Sisters Their Entire Lives

Feb 11, 2022 by apost team

While the sight of identical twins makes many of us do a double-take, a set of twins from Gloucester, England, stand out for a different reason. In this story from 2015, sisters Lucy and Maria Aylmer gained fame for their striking differences — Lucy is fair-skinned with straight red hair, while Maria has black curly hair and a light-brown complexion. Although Maria and Lucy share a birthday, their appearance could not be more different.

As reported by CNN, Maria and Lucy are the daughters of Donna Aylmer, who is part-Jamaican and has one black and one white parent, and Vince Aylmer, who is white. The couple also has three other kids, whose appearances are somewhere between the two. For this reason, Lucy says that when she was a child, many people assumed that she was adopted. She told "Good Morning Britain," as reported by CNN:

"It was pretty hard ... It went on in secondary school as well, and it wasn't very nice."

The twins were born in Jan. 1997 and Donna described how surprised she and Vince were when they met their newborn daughters. They knew they were having twins but a scan can't show much. So when Lucy and Maria were born with very different skin tones it came as a shock. Lucy told the Daily Mail:

"It was such a shock for her because things like skin colour don’t show up on scans before birth. So she had no idea that we were so different. When the midwife handed us both to her she was just speechless." 

The twins have three other siblings who are all older — George, Chynna and Jordan — and their features sit somewhere between Lucy and Maria's. Unfortunately, it wasn't easy for the sisters to explain their situation to people while growing up, and even friends didn't believe they were biologically related. Lucy told the Daily Mail:

"Our brothers and sisters have skin which is in between Maria and I. We are at opposite ends of the spectrum and they are all somewhere in between. But my grandmother has a very fair English rose complexion, just like mine.

"No one ever believes we are twins. Even when we dress alike, we still don’t look like sisters, let alone twins. Friends have even made us produce our birth certificates to prove it."

Lucy added:

"Most twins look like two peas in a pod – but we couldn’t look more different if we tried. We don’t look like we have the same parents, let alone having been born at the same time."

In addition to their differences in appearance, the sisters say they also have quite different personalities as well as different fashion styles. Lucy has a more reserved personality, and she also prefers more laid-back and casual attire. Maria, on the other hand, is more of a social butterfly and her style is a little dressier. This even extended to their interests, which took them in different directions after high school ended. While Lucy attended Gloucester College to study art and design, Maria chose the path to become a lawyer, which she studied at Cheltenham College.  

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While at university, the sisters loved telling friends about their completely opposite twin. Lucy said:

"Maria was outgoing whilst I was the shy one. But Maria loves telling people at college that she has a white twin – and I’m very proud of having a black twin."

During their appearance on "Good Morning Britain," Maria said that she'd been told their situation had a "one in a million" chance of probability, however, the BBC reported on a similar occurrence in 2011 and declared the chances were closer to 1 in 500.

People all over the world can't believe their unique story. On the YouTube video about them, one person wrote:

"Genetics is so fascinating. Also, they're both so beautiful but in such different ways. I love that."

Meanwhile, others could still see the family resemblance. One user said they shared their mom's smile, while another wrote:

"Both girls literally have the same eyes and nose and smile."

Yet another user announced their disdain for the fact that twins are always compared with one another, but since each is unique "it's like comparing apples and oranges." In any case, everyone could agree that both Lucy and Maria were gorgeous in their own special ways and that it didn't really matter whether they looked alike or not. Despite their differences, Lucy and Maria love each other and the unique bond they share as twins. While it is very rare to find twins as different as the Aylmer sisters, their story reminds us that we all have much more in common than we are different.  

Do you know any twins with major physical differences? Let us know and if their story inspired you, send it to everyone you know to remind them that love is stronger than the superficial differences that divide us.