Skin can­cer is an under­rat­ed but life-threat­en­ing dan­ger that can hit anyone—no mat­ter your age, gen­der, or skin col­or. As some­one at risk, I’m espe­cial­ly com­mit­ted to rais­ing aware­ness about this dis­ease. That’s why I’ve been sup­port­ing the «Spot the Dot» ini­tia­tive for a while now. It shines a light on skin can­cer through events, col­lab­o­ra­tions, or exhi­bi­tions. I recent­ly talked with Mar­i­je, the founder of Spot the Dot, about her per­son­al expe­ri­ence with skin can­cer, the chal­lenges she faced start­ing the ini­tia­tive, cul­tur­al dif­fer­ences in how skin can­cer is per­ceived, and the cre­ative ways she’s bring­ing atten­tion to the issue. Our con­ver­sa­tion high­lights just how cru­cial it is to take skin can­cer seri­ous­ly and how we can all play a part in prevention.

Trotzen­dorff: Spot the Dot was found­ed, because a phys­io­ther­a­pist friend noticed a tiny spot that led to your own melanoma diag­no­sis. How did that expe­ri­ence shape your per­spec­tive on health­care pro­fes­sion­als beyond der­ma­tol­o­gists in the fight against skin cancer?

Mar­i­je: It is true, I was hav­ing a cof­fee with a friend; it was sum­mer, and I was wear­ing a dress. He spot­ted a sus­pi­cious mole on my low­er left leg while sip­ping an espres­so. The fact that he was a health­care pro­fes­sion­al was only rel­e­vant because he once attend­ed a train­ing on how to rec­og­nize a sus­pi­cious mole. All of us can learn how to rec­og­nize a sus­pi­cious spot (a med­ical pro­fes­sion­al will take it from there). In some coun­tries, there are ini­tia­tives to teach the ABCDE method to beau­ti­cians, pedi­curists, hair­dressers, bar­bers, tat­too artists, and oth­er peo­ple who have pro­fes­sions that allow them to see a lot of skin because we might not be able to see on our scalp, behind our ears, or under­neath our feet our­selves. How­ev­er, I always hope that if we are all a tiny bit more aware, we can per­haps «check the back» of peo­ple around us too, no mat­ter what our pro­fes­sion is.

Start­ing a foun­da­tion is no small feat. Can you share a piv­otal moment or chal­lenge in the ear­ly days of found­ing Spot the Dot that real­ly test­ed your resolve but also solid­i­fied your com­mit­ment to this cause?

I’ve faced many chal­lenges through­out the years (laughs). For me, the begin­ning was easy. I had just been diag­nosed, was under­go­ing immune treat­ment, and des­per­ate­ly need­ed some­thing to keep myself occu­pied, some­thing that would turn this neg­a­tive expe­ri­ence into some­thing mean­ing­ful and pos­i­tive. I learned that my friends and fam­i­ly, as well as friends and fam­i­ly of oth­er patients, also felt the need to do some­thing. It is weird to com­pare it, but for many types of can­cer, there was some­thing to do, like wear­ing a pink rib­bon, rid­ing a bike up a moun­tain, or join­ing a can­cer run. Skin can­cer did not have any­thing like that in Europe a decade ago. In most coun­tries, there were no cam­paigns, and there were not even patient orga­ni­za­tions. So yes, in the begin­ning, the moti­va­tion for me and my sur­round­ings was easy. In the ear­ly days I ordered a huge amount of bags full of con­fet­ti (dots) and I took it from there.

Keep­ing that same moti­va­tion has been a chal­lenge. The main dri­ve has always been the mis­con­cep­tions I’ve heard, and as long as I keep hav­ing to explain to peo­ple that skin can­cer can be dead­ly, that it can hap­pen to peo­ple of all ages, gen­ders, and skin col­ors, that moti­va­tion is there. The chal­lenge for me per­son­al­ly to stay moti­vat­ed is a lot about time-man­age­ment, doing this all next to a full-time job, hav­ing to some­how find funds for unavoid­able costs, end­less paper­work, etc. I was ready to quit a thou­sand times, but every time I receive a DM or email from some­one say­ing they had been diag­nosed with ear­ly-stage melanoma because they went to do a skin check after hear­ing about Spot the Dot, I know why I have to go on. And I’ve received many of those in the last decade.

Giv­en that Spot the Dot oper­ates in mul­ti­ple coun­tries and lan­guages, have you noticed any sig­nif­i­cant cul­tur­al dif­fer­ences in how peo­ple per­ceive and approach skin can­cer pre­ven­tion and detection?

In every coun­try I am active in, I try to work with local med­ical pro­fes­sion­als and local patient orga­ni­za­tions. Togeth­er, we look at sta­tis­tics, talk about their nation­al med­ical guide­lines, but also local behav­ior or cul­tur­al beliefs. Of course, there are some obvi­ous dif­fer­ences, but gen­er­al­ly, I can say that in most parts of West­ern cul­ture, there is a strong tan­ning cul­ture and a strong sen­ti­ment that hav­ing a tan is more beau­ti­ful. I once did an aware­ness project in Kuwait; you’d think that peo­ple already cov­er up their skin a lot there, either for reli­gious rea­sons or because it is sim­ply too hot not to. How­ev­er, we for­get that my mes­sage is main­ly about doing skin checks. Also there in the desert, it is advised to know how to rec­og­nize a sus­pi­cious spot. Last­ly, I see more of a gen­er­a­tional change that links to Tik­Tok trends, young peo­ple being so scared to get wrin­kles nowa­days that they learn the num­ber one way to avoid that is by apply­ing sun­screen daily …

Spot the Dot col­lab­o­rates with artists and ath­letes. Can you share a par­tic­u­lar­ly mem­o­rable col­lab­o­ra­tion and the impact it had on rais­ing aware­ness for skin cancer?

Many of my projects were mem­o­rable since they were per­ceived as weird or out-of-the-box, and I had no idea if they would work, but they left a mark. It taught me to dare to be dif­fer­ent and dare to fail. I fig­ured we see all these cam­paigns that link skin can­cer to the beach, sun­screen, tanned bod­ies, bright sun, and warm sum­mer days. I told myself, let’s do none of that and go the oppo­site direc­tion: I orga­nized a win­ter graf­fi­ti and music fes­ti­val in the north of the Nether­lands at minus 6 degrees at an indus­tri­al area. My old flat­mate and world-famous street artist Nychos, who has 600,000+ fol­low­ers, ded­i­cat­ed a paint­ing of Bar­bie with a melt­ing face to my cause. BMX-er Travis Pas­trana made a pho­to for us point­ing at a col­or­ful dot on his face. I made short films show­ing skaters, pow­er­lifters, female BMX rid­ers, and a der­ma­tol­o­gist ski­ing. I even pro­duced road cycling out­fits and asked the road cycling com­mu­ni­ty if tan-lines are real­ly to die for?

What is one of the most inno­v­a­tive or sur­pris­ing ways Spot the Dot has engaged peo­ple in con­ver­sa­tions about skin can­cer pre­ven­tion that you are par­tic­u­lar­ly proud of?

Because of the exam­ples above, the Spot the Dot mes­sage end­ed up in unex­pect­ed places. Places where my mes­sage sud­den­ly stood out. Instead of read­ing about health in a med­ical mag­a­zine or a fash­ion mag­a­zine next to a sun­screen ad or a TV item dur­ing the hottest day of the year, you’d open up a moun­tain bike mag­a­zine and read an inter­view with one of my ambas­sadors. Or you’d be at a Vans skate­board­ing event and see peo­ple rid­ing in our Faster Than Skin Can­cer gear, or you’d go to a run­ning event and won­der why peo­ple are wear­ing «Night Run­ners» shirts, a cam­paign I devel­oped togeth­er with Willpow­er Run­ning. Actu­al­ly, this cam­paign is the rea­son that you and I got to know each other!

On the project’s home­page you men­tion hear­ing many mis­con­cep­tions about skin can­cer. What is one of the most dan­ger­ous or per­va­sive mis­con­cep­tions you’ve encoun­tered, and how does Spot the Dot address it?

In my per­son­al opin­ion, the most dan­ger­ous mis­con­cep­tion is think­ing that skin checks are not impor­tant, not real­ly under­stand­ing how such a sim­ple act can save your life (yes, peo­ple die all the time from skin can­cer), and some­how think­ing it does not apply to you (remem­ber, skin can­cer can hap­pen to any­one regard­less of your skin tone, gen­der, age etc). All the big mis­un­der­stand­ings are in here. Many can­cer checks are rather uncom­fort­able and not some­thing we can do our­selves, but this one we can do. I mean, a self-check of the skin nev­er replaces one by a pro­fes­sion­al, but it does help to rec­og­nize a sus­pi­cious spot ear­ly on. Teach your­self what to look out for, and all you do is get naked. I hope that in the future, doing a quick skin check is as much a part of our health rou­tine as brush­ing our teeth is.

Look­ing ahead, what is your long-term vision for Spot the Dot? Are there any upcom­ing projects or ini­tia­tives that you’re par­tic­u­lar­ly excit­ed about?

My «Faster Than Skin Can­cer (FTS)» cam­paign is the longest-run­ning cam­paign, and it is still going strong. I love doing mer­chan­dis­ing for dif­fer­ent types of sports. I recent­ly launched a cor­duroy cap togeth­er with Willpow­er Run­ning, and I am pret­ty sure more is com­ing up. Anoth­er thing I am real­ly excit­ed about is our first book. In Sep­tem­ber, I will launch a lim­it­ed edi­tion pho­tog­ra­phy book togeth­er with the world-famous doc­u­men­tary pho­tog­ra­ph­er Anna Bedyńs­ka enti­tled «Spot­ted Real­i­ties.» You can pre-order it via Spot the Dot. I hope I can do more projects in coun­tries where there is a big need for aware­ness because the gov­ern­ment is not doing any­thing or because there are no patient orga­ni­za­tions local­ly. This is why I try to add more lan­guages to my cam­paigns, my game and pub­li­ca­tions. Most­ly, I hope that my projects con­tin­ue to have a pos­i­tive impact, and I look for­ward to mak­ing friends along the way. I love meet­ing peo­ple like you, Florian. :)

For those read­ing this inter­view, espe­cial­ly run­ners and out­door enthu­si­asts, what’s one action­able step you would rec­om­mend they take today to reduce their risk of skin cancer?

Ask your­self and ask the peo­ple around you if you would rec­og­nize and real­ize if you have a sus­pi­cious spot on your body. Make that con­ver­sa­tion over din­ner or in the chang­ing room of your gym or dur­ing a run. And slap on sun­screen every damn day.