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Skin Deep by Phillipa McGuinness review – a fascinating study of our largest organ
This wonderfully eclectic book covers everything from cancer to cosmetics, racism to skin hunger, with curiosity and intelligence throughout
Get our weekend culture and lifestyle email and listen to our podcastOur skin carries so much complex and ambiguous meaning. By definition it is superficial, but our experience of it is profound. It is the border of the body, but also porous and easily breached; it is what others first see of us, the part of our physical selves that we present to the world, and also where we register that world, touching and being touched, in return. It is a visible site of oppression with a long history and continuing legacy, a marker of many kinds of privilege – but also an organ like any other.
It’s these “strange and wonderful” and often-contradictory associations towards which Phillipa McGuinness is gesturing with the title of her second book: skin deep may well suggest just the surface level, but skin is also important enough that it “makes us who we are”.
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