![]() ![]() McGuinness is a confident, conversational guide, pulling research and references from interviews, historical records, personal experiences and social media, and threading them into an easy- to-follow narrative that will have you filing various things away for cocktail chatter with friends. You won't think about skin the same way again. An appropriately multi-layered cultural exploration of who we are. From the cosmetic to the constructs of race, Phillipa leaves no pore unexamined in the multifaceted ways our skin defines us. Skin Deep is an insightful, witty polemic that shows what’s on the outside tells us as much about ourselves as what’s on the inside. McGuinness has gone deep under the skin in all its shades, conditions, marvels and misreadings to produce a sparkling and deeply sympathetic look below the surface into our deepest selves. It's for anyone who has ever blushed, itched, inked, sweated - hot or cold - or felt the wonder of another. I laughed and gasped with McGuinness as she explores, with characteristic wit and sympathy, the extraordinary world of skin, and in the end, I felt better about my own. Skin Deep is a wild and wonderful ride from the outside in. Philosophy too, given skin is the point where our self, and our self-perception, struggles with or embraces the way others see us, and the way we see ourselves. Phillipa McGuinness has interviewed plastic surgeons, dermatologists, burn survivors, beauticians, melanoma sufferers, people who suffer from body dysmorphias, victims and perpetrators of racism, and all kinds of people who are and are not comfortable in their own skin, to write a book where science meets art and culture, history and politics. It heals itself! It’s wafer-thin! Skin cells remake themselves! Paradoxically, skin is a barrier and a point of contact. Skin Deep explores beauty, ageing, imperfection, health and illness, all of which are closely related to skin, and interrogates whiteness, both historically, structurally and through current notions of white fragility and victimhood. Skin shouldn’t give you the measure of a person but we function as if it does. You will intuitively compile information and judgements about a stranger based on their skin and the clothing that covers it. Skin keeps the outside out and the inside in. Touch is how we express love and affection as well as darker, violent emotions. Primeval, sometimes mysterious forces drive skin-to-skin contact, but erotic desire is but one of many deep-seated urges that make us want to touch the skin of another. ![]() The body’s biggest organ even has its own sub-set of organs – sweat glands, sebaceous glands and hair follicles. Skin remains waterproof even while our entire epidermis replaces itself each month. Skin serves as a barrier between us and the germs that would otherwise invade and destroy us. How the world responds to imperfection and difference. What happens to it when something goes wrong. The strange wonderfulness of our bodily covering. A book about skin, that wonderful thing that covers our body, acting as both barrier and receptor to life. ![]()
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