Sensing the skin: acne sufferers and the dermatologization of life

ABSTRACT

In this paper, we explore what we call the “dermatologization of life” and how it regulates the ways in which acne sufferers relate to their skin. We refer to these ways of relating to the skin as “skin sensing”. Through an analysis of the online narratives found on the website acne.org, we demonstrate how the skin sensing bound up with dermatologization both converges with and diverges from biomedical understandings of acne in three key contexts: the hormonal, the alimentary and the nocturnal. In doing so, we show that skin sensing involves a complex combination of pleasure and pain, excitement and exhaustion, and work and play. Ultimately, we suggest that the ways in which acne sufferers sense their skin open up a set of possibilities that not only disable but also enable them as they embark on the often all-consuming quest for a clear complexion.

KEYWORDS:

• Skin
• senses
• acne
• biomedicine
• regulation

Acknowledgments

We acknowledge the support we received from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council under the auspices of the grant entitled “Law and the Regulation of the Senses” (435-2015-1416). We thank Sheryl Hamilton, David Howes, Monika Class and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful suggestions on earlier drafts of the paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. We read and recorded posts anonymously. For a more detailed discussion of the ethics of researcher anonymity, informed consent and electronic support groups, see Barker (2008).

2. Our point here is not that the experiential exists independently of the discursive. The two are inevitably bound up in one another, particularly in the context of an electronic support group like acne.org where the former is – quite literally – brought into being by means of the latter. Our point is merely that the study aims to attend to the experiences represented in the discursive forms that characterize acne.org rather than account for the operations and effects of the forms themselves.

3. Research on the relationship between the mind and the skin is not new. Ancient philosophers such as Hippocrates, early dermatologists such as William James Erasmus Wilson and turn-of-the-century psychoanalysts such as Sigmund Freud expressed interest in the skin as the somatic embodiment of psychic disturbance. That said, psychodermatology is a relatively new area of clinical research and practice in Western medicine. Psychodermatology as a discipline only emerged in the 1960s while professional associations and conferences began to appear in the 1980s and 1990s (Rodriguez-Cerdeira et al. 2011).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Marc Lafrance

Marc Lafrance is an associate professor of sociology and anthropology at Concordia University. Drawing on his background in the social sciences and the humanities, he works on two key objects of enquiry—contemporary medical practices and mass media representations—and explores how they are bound up with phenomena such as gender, sexuality, race, class and ability; body image and body modification; identity and lived experience; and human vulnerability across the life-course. His work has appeared in journals such as Body and Society, Theory, Culture and Society, Cultural Studies and Critical Methodologies, and Medical Humanities.

R. Scott Carey

R. Scott Carey is a recent PhD graduate from the School of Kinesiology and Health Studies at Queen’s University. His dissertation research critically explores the contemporary relationship between dermatology, skin, and the self by examining the experiences of acne sufferers. His work has been funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and published in refereed journals such as Body and Society.