I Asked 10 Non-Doctors If They Think I Have Extra Nipples

Will you please look at this thing on my skin?

I really dont think its nasty that harry has four nipples i think of it as the more the marrier. Btw if it was swiched around and your bf/gf had four nipples or even better you had four nipples how would you like it if people kept getting on your nerves about something you were born with would you like it just like lady gaga said “i was born this way” so if any of you have a problem with it build a bridge and get over it :^)

— Kayla, commenting on “Does Harry Styles Have 4 Nipples?” on Maximumpop.co.uk, Dec 2012

I was born with, or maybe developed over time, two moles on my torso, or maybe nipples, I am not sure. I started questioning my moles about a month ago when my friend told me professional singer Harry Styles has four nipples. After hitting up Google Image Search for a quick fact check (you can never trust friends!) I found that Harry Styles is in (good?) company, with fellow more-than-two-nippled celebrities like Mark Wahlberg, Lily Allen, and Chandler Bing. They — the nipples — are called “supernumerary nipples.” The people are called celebrities, and a fictional person.

While looking through several celebrity/nipple-related listicles, I was surprised to see how much the content resonated with me, because — and I am not trying to body-shame anyone — all of the supernumerary-nippled celebs look like regular mole people, like me. Either that, or my moles are actually nipples. Finding it hard to believe that so many websites could publish photos of moles and call them nipples if it weren’t true, I began to wonder…Could it be that I actually have extra nipples? This was the kind of question that I would love to take to a medical professional, the only two things stopping me being that a) the last time I went to the dermatologist she kept pointing at parts of my skin I could not identify and saying “What is this,” which I found embarrassing, and b) I can’t really afford a visit the doctor right now, especially for such a superfluous non-emergency.

So I did the next best thing, which is consult Wikipedia and then ask a sampling of friends, none of whom are doctors but all of whom I trust (you can trust friends! I was just kidding before!) with absolutely all of my medical and personal information. Most of the friends that I talked to, I did so over g-chat while I was in line for free food. “Can I ask you a W for something I am writing,” I asked many, and “Can I ask you some Qs for something I am writing” I asked a few, before launching into a brief explanation about Harry Styles, nipples, etc.

Some disregarded the nipple notion immediately. One friend told me, having closely inspected somewhere around thirty naked men, she has never noticed a supernumerary nipple and so does not think that I have any/that they exist, despite me quoting to her a sentence I read on Wikipedia: “Often mistaken for moles, supernumerary nipples are diagnosed in humans at a rate of approximately 1 in 18 people.” Another simply responded, “I think the body is a wild and wonderful thing,” saying that extra nipples are neither cool nor weird but “something else.”

Several suggested that the thing that would make the moles nipples is symmetry, which my moles do not possess, while others suspected it was height-related. I showed my friend Meg a picture of me wearing a crop top that reveals one of the maybe-nipples, and she deemed it too low. A few suggested function was more important, that maybe nerve endings were necessary for my moles to be considered nipples, and that maybe I will never know until I get pregnant and see if they “are activated” (i.e., lactate). When I raised my shirt up during a late-night dinner in a restaurant, Carina said the moles-or-nips were too small and that they “wouldn’t be able to do their job.” From one seat over, Langan said that although they could or could not be nipples, she hopes they are because she thinks it’s cool, not gross, and that having them would make me more like a dog (a good thing). The more I asked, the more dogs were brought up.

Perhaps the most knowledgable of my resources was my friend’s brother who has moles that the doctor has called nipples because they occur along “milk lines” that run from the armpits to the groin. He told me that they’re just moles on a line and that I can call them nipples if I want, because I am captain of my own destiny. While for most of my life besides this month I have always thought of them as moles, when I think of them as nipples I feel more like a celebrity who would find an image of herself in a listicle. Of my friends that I asked only one friend said “This is why I don’t hang out with u” [sic]. I assume she is jealous, and that if she built a bridge she could go over it, with the Harry-haters and nip-shamers alike. I was born, or maybe developed, I am not sure, this way.

Jenny Nelson lives and writes in Brooklyn.