A Man’s Skin: A Satirical Look at Gender Roles

Hey Bookworms, today’s review is for a translated graphic novel: A Man’s Skin. This book was recommended to me as part of my ‘12 friend recommendations’ and I’m glad because I had never heard of it before!

Synopsis

Bianca is a young noble lady and she’s of marriage age. She’s engaged to Giovanni, a rich merchant she’s never met, and she desperately wishes she knew something about him. Before the wedding, she learns about the secret held by the women of her family: they have a “Man’s Skin”. When wearing the skin, she becomes “Lorenzo” and is freed from all the limitations that Renaissance Italy imposes on women. Bianca takes the opportunity to get acquainted with Giovanni in his natural environment but what she learns changes her life more than she ever expected!

I’ll start by saying that I enjoyed this book but was sometimes pulled out of the narrative when the dialogue felt choppy or awkward, which might be due to the translation from the French. Zanzim illustrated this book and his art style is so vibrant and expressive that it brings the humour and emotion of the story to life. Humour is an integral part of the story for me because ‘A Man’s Skin’ is satirizing the condition of women in a patriarchal system. Not only does it shed light on societal double standards, but it also has a tongue-in-cheek and irreverent tone that I especially appreciate when paired with the heavy topics of this book.

As “Lorenzo” and Giovanni get to know each other, the reader begins to see parallels between Bianca and Giovanni in the ways that they both move through a world that sees them as “outsiders” and “lesser than” for not being a straight man. They are each oppressed within the societal constructs of Renaissance Italy yet they each also have different privileges and I loved seeing how they learned to love and respect each other for who they are. Although the idea of the “Man’s Skin” is fantastical, the characters’ interactions are relatable and human. They both want to be understood and loved and have the autonomy to live according to their own needs rather than the arbitrary rules of Propriety.

“To hear him, everything is the fault of women, succubus and temptresses! Men are poor little things at the mercy of our perverse appetites which they need to be protected from by veiling us from head to foot. That’s not really what I experience every day. You’d think he was living in a parallel world.”

A Man’s Skin, Hubert

Clothing plays a huge part in the story: From characters dressed in drag, to how the Man’s Skin was used as clothing. Bianca says that when she’s only wearing the Man’s Skin she doesn’t feel naked because it’s Lorenzo’s nudity—not hers. It affords her a layer of anonymity and freedom she cannot experience as a woman as her existence is ever more highly controlled. This is brought to a head as Bianca’s brother, Father Angelo, fans the flames of zealotry in the town’s populace. The morality-policing mobs begin to force all women to veil themselves out of false piety and misplaced sexual frustration. This part was a bit tough for me to read because of some violent and humiliation-based imagery yet, the illustrations and text make it clear that the book is condemning zealots which provides some much-needed catharsis in my opinion.

Seeing some reviews, some complaints would be valid if we only read books at face value rather than interrogating them on a deeper level. For example, there’s a character in the book that explains homosexuality to Bianca as “basically, men can’t access women in our tightly controlled society, therefore they choose each other instead”. Yes, if the tone of this book was serious or academic-based, this concern would be reasonable. However, I read it as a belief that might be held by people of the 15th century. I mean, I’ll go ahead and catalogue that with the other ridiculous things characters said such as: “Men’s bodies are warm and dry and women’s bodies are cold and humid”. Complaining that a character said something untrue feels disingenuous to me, so I felt compelled to defend the point. Hypocrisy, rigid gender norms, and society’s focus on male-centred pleasure are a few of the things this book questions and interrogates.

Final Thoughts & Rating

That being said, Bianca and Giovanni end up in a place that works for them and their family within the cultural expectations of that time and place. It might not be the perfect ending but does it have to be? Just like this book, it’s not perfect but I think it achieves what it set out to do: celebrate the joy of sexuality removed from shame.

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