In Skin, Monty Lyman takes us on a journey around the largest organ in the human body. He first explores the terrain of the physical skin, picking out the facts from the fiction. Does our diet affect our skin? What makes the skin age? Is it possible to prevent hair loss? And then the examines the intriguing hinterland between the skin and the mind, from the pain and pleasure of touch to the effects of stress on the skin.
The skin and the mind are intimate friends and no other organ carries such psychological weight. How our skin is perceived by others - or more specifically, how we think others perceive our skin - affects our mental health. The skin is itself a kind of book, upon which scars, wrinkles and tattoos tell our body's story, but it is not all written in indelible ink.
The skin also works as a wax tablet from which we scrape away old writings to use again and again. Our outer covering is a shifting visual display of our internal emotion, whether subtle facial twitches, blushing or the unwanted eruptions of an underlying physical or psychological condition. This journey will finally take us to the social skin, as Monty examines the subjects of beauty, body art, the gender role of skin and the emotive subject of skin colour.
The skin is simultaneously visible yet invisible. Despite being our largest and most obvious organ, it holds many secrets. It reveals much about who we are as human beings. To understand it is to understand us. As we look at the world through the prism of our enigmatic outer covering, we may just start seeing differently.
