In the February issue of Glamour, Jennifer Lawrence stands up for a few of the causes we’ve come to expect of our celebrity feminist role models: Planned Parenthood, women in Hollywood, victims of Larry David’s heinous ghosting. But she’s also representing an arguably more disenfranchised populace: mole-havers everywhere. Just look at her on the cover in that white décolletage-bearing dress: moles aplenty, practically a constellation of them dotting her neck and chest. She’s a study in moles straight out of a dermatology textbook. In Us Weekly parlance, she’s flaunting them.
For the mole-y man or woman who has noticed Lawrence’s moles in a movie—look at the adorable pair on her neck that crookedly frame her jaw!—and found solace in their mere existence, this is a day worth celebrating. Moles aren’t all that common a sight on glossy magazine covers, where smooth, flawless skin tends to reign. This is hardly Lawrence’s first magazine-cover rodeo, and on other covers, her mole level has ranged from prominent to “are they just freckles?” to all but airbrushed out.
Glamour.com
Moles are the kind of “flaw,” like curly hair or simply being tall, that many girls don’t understand to be a bad thing at all until they read a patronizing teen magazine story about celebrating their imperfections. Mole also sounds so terribly unattractive, a word inextricably linked to rodents and urban legends of homelessness. And then there’s also the whiff of getting older about moles, and we all know how American culture feels about aging. Birthmark or beauty mark sounds better, but not all moles are birthmarks, the American Academy of Dermatology tells us. Although Jennifer Lawrence is in many ways a god who walks among mortals, she is showing the rest of us that it is OK to be a human being occupying the flawed, freckly, mole-y, eventually wrinkly skin you were born with.
Cindy Crawford had her signature mole, and other celebrities have made moles work for them, but usually they just have one of note. Lawrence, refreshingly, is a lady of many moles, perhaps even the mole-iest sex symbol the world has yet seen. Her only possible rival is Rachel McAdams, whose many moles never emoted more plaintively than in her audition for The Notebook.
According to the Mayo Clinic, “[m]ost moles are harmless,” and “[m]ost people have 10 to 45 moles.” JLaw has about 15 visible on the Glamour cover, but as she is above average in all things, she’s probably at the high end of the spectrum. Oh, to be the lucky M.D. who gets to determine that woman’s total mole count! People should start getting tattoos of her mole formation in solidarity. If there’s any justice in the world, Urban Outfitters will soon start mass-producing bodysuits with her moles printed in their corresponding locations. Get moles like JLaw’s! And don’t forget to wear sunscreen.
