What is a skin tag?

Skin tags are common, acquired, benign skin growths that look like a small piece of soft, hanging skin. Skin tags are harmless growths. Some individuals may be more prone to tags (greater than 50-100 tags) either through increased weight, part combined with heredity, or other unknown causes. Males and females are equally prone to developing skin tags. Obesity and being moderately overweight (even temporary increases) dramatically increase the chances of having skin tags. Normal weight individuals with larger breasts are also more prone to skin tags under their breasts. Some small tags spontaneously rub or fall off painlessly and the person may not even know they had a skin tag. Most tags do not fall off on their own and stay around once formed. The medical name for skin tag is acrochordon.

Skin tag are bits of skin- or flesh-colored tissue that project from the surrounding skin from a small, narrow stalk. Some people call these growths "skin tabs" or barnacles. Skin tags typically occur in characteristic locations including the base of the neck, underarms, eyelids, groin folds, and under the breasts (especially where underwire bras rub directly beneath the breasts). Although skin tags may vary somewhat in appearance, they are usually smooth or slightly wrinkled and irregular, flesh-colored or slightly more brown, and hang from the skin by a small stalk. Early or beginning skin tags may be as small as a flattened pinhead-sized bump around the neck. While most tags typically are small (2-5 mm in diameter) at approximately one-third to one-half the size of a pinky fingernail, some skin tags may become as large as a big grape (1 cm in diameter) or a fig (5 cm in diameter).