The American Osteopathic College of Dermatology calls a mole a nevus (plural: nevi) which is Latin for "spot". Moles that a person is born with are called congenital nevi, while those that occur later are known as acquired nevi. Their brown color is caused by melanin, i.e. skin pigment. They can appear on their own or in groups.

Sex and the City's Carrie Bradshaw had a mole on her chin which didn't prevent her from becoming a huge sex symbol. She had it removed a year ago, after which some people find her unrecognizable. Many stars considered beautiful have had moles: to name but 14 we have Elizabeth Taylor, Brigitte Nielsen, Paula Abdul, Shannen Doherty, Robert de Niro, Mariah Carey, Anna Nicole Smith, Carmen Electra, Pink, Marilyn Monroe, Cindy Crawford, Gloria Estefan, Janet Jackson and Telly Savalas.

The Japanese term for a beautiful woman with a mole is hokuro bijin. Some attractive manga characters have moles, obviously a deliberate decision on the part of the creators. One Japanese woman was perturbed when asked if she would have her mole removed, saying it was her shirushi (the mark by which one is known) and that without her mole, people wouldn't recognize her in the afterlife and she would spent all eternity alone. Japanese don't get more moles than other races, but what moles they do get are quite noticeable against their light skin.

Brent Moelleken, M.D., said, "Many more patient are having 'beauty marks' removed. Moles that become large and unsightly are prime candidates for removal". Throughout history, moles have been sported by witches, frogs and other creatures of the shadows.

In the 1700s, Richard Sanders (1613-1687) created a pseudoscience that gained in popularity, holding that every facial mole had a matching birthmark elsewhere on the body. If you could find out where both marks were, you could gain insight into a person's character, so a man with a mole on the bridge of the nose and another on his right thigh would be a person of good mood destined to receive a sizable inheritance.

Methods of Chinese and Japanese fortune-telling also use moles.

A recent study has found that moles could be associated with youthfulness. Nature doesn't give us something for no reason, so it is possible that moles serve a purpose other than increasing the risk of melanoma, a form of skin cancer.

A team led by consultant dermatologist Dr Veronique Bataille studied the DNA of over 900 sets of female twins. They were looking at telomeres, clumps of DNA that restrict the ends of chromosomes. They get shorter as cells partition over time, and previous studies discovered that long telomeres are likely to be younger.

The study, published in Cancer Epidemiology Biomarkers & Prevention, showed that those with more than 100 moles usually had longer telomeres than people with less than 25. The difference in length was tantamount to six or seven years of aging.

Dr Bataille pointed out that while a person with more than 100 moles is ten times more likely to develop skin cancer, the overall chance of developing the disease was still low.