In hindsight, let me just say that if you think this is about you, it isn’t. Unless you consider “being about you” to mean “I keep meaning to mention this, because this is what I think of every time you mention thin skin…”
I have come to the conclusion that I need to grow thicker skin. Between having people tell me, over and again, that they don’t see the point to bioethics and intimating that there’s something dirty about being in an applied philosophy field, my irritation with being treated differently because I’m female, and my (admittedly bemused) exasperation at some things I can’t really go into, and being flat out told a couple of times that I just need thicker skin, well – I’ve decided to stop ignoring the suggestion.
I’m going to grow thicker skin. For those of you who aren’t involved in the DIYbiotech movement (also known as the biotech hobbyists), Natalie Jeremijenko is an amazingly creative inventor who works in that interesting subsection of arts and technology. I became familiar with her, and the other folks in the biotech hobbyist movement with my last adviser, who has a strong interest in this area, too (and in fact, a bunch of us ran with it and Merleau-Ponty for a class on the intersection of arts and science; but I digress). And one of Natalie’s projects is the Skin Kit, in which she not only talks about what makes something human, and how much has to be removed before it’s non-human, and even the ethics around the idea of growing skin, but she publishes the directions to grow your own skin.
And even tells you how to make it glow.
So I figure, this is the perfect solution! I’ll literally grow thicker skin!