Epithelial Appendages

You look at yourself in the mirror. What you see is not your skin alone. It is your hair, falling in waves or standing on end. It is your nails, smooth or brittle, cared for or bitten. It is the fine patina of sweat and sebum that gives your surface a particular scent, a particular sheen. These are the epithelial appendages — everything your skin additionally produces in order to act at the interface between inside and outside.

Medically speaking, they are outgrowths and ingrowths of the epidermis. Hair follicles, sebaceous glands, sweat glands, nails — specialised structures that grow from the same tissue as the skin itself but take on their own tasks: heat regulation, mechanical protection, touch, scent, secretion. They are simultaneously body and body adornment, simultaneously function and expression.