Experiments in Skin: Race and Beauty in the Shadows of Vietnam

by Thuy Linh Nguyen Tu

In Experiments in Skin Thuy Linh Nguyen Tu examines the ongoing influence of the Vietnam War on contemporary ideas about race and beauty. Framing skin as the site around which these ideas have been formed, Tu foregrounds the histories of militarism in the production of US biomedical knowledge and commercial cosmetics. She uncovers the efforts of wartime scientists in the US Military Dermatology Research Program to alleviate the environmental and chemical risks to soldiers' skin. These dermatologists sought relief for white soldiers while denying that African American soldiers and Vietnamese civilians were also vulnerable to harm. Their experiments led to the development of pharmaceutical cosmetics, now used by women in Ho Chi Minh City to tend to their skin, and to grapple with the damage caused by the war's lingering toxicity. In showing how the US military laid the foundations for contemporary Vietnamese consumption of cosmetics and practices of beauty, Tu shows how the intersecting histories of militarism, biomedicine, race, and aesthetics become materially and metaphorically visible on skin.

Genres: Nonfiction, Academic, School

240 pages, Paperback

First published April 16, 2021

Reviews

[JC · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another grad student recommended this book to me last year when we were discussing metabolism. It's quite fascinating and unsettling to write beauty and environmental and military violence together with each other in such an intimate way. It read a lot like ethnography and history for me, but Tu in the book states: "This book... offers neither a history of the Vietnam War nor an ethnography of contemporary Vietnam. I rely on the methods and scholarship in both of these rich fields, but my questions are about the ways military, medical, and commercial interests in our body’s surface have given shape to the desires for beauty and the hierarchies of race, under changing geopolitical, economic, and ecological conditions."

I had the chance to hear Tu's lecture for the Technoscience Research Unit Salon at the University of Toronto recently and loved her presentation. Had the chance to attend a workshop the next day discussing some of her new work and it's quite exciting stuff to me. Definitely not up everyone's alley. Her work can be sprawling and non-linear at times, but it's exactly the mode of storytelling that I love reading. Drawing connections into mundane and unexpected places. The writing itself is beautiful.

[catherine · Rating 5 out of 5]

used this for my arms and warfare writing class research paper. such an interesting, important study of chemical warfare’s impact on science during the vietnam war and its lasting damage on Black and Vietnamese bodies.

[Bentley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting read about how Vietnam war shaped cosmetic practices and beauty among Vietnamese. It was definitely research-heavy, medical sociology-like book.

[Myha Hill · Rating 5 out of 5]

Incredible book by my incredible mother.

[Edrian · Rating 5 out of 5]

A book that laid foundation for the formation of my worldview. Thank you!

[Hannah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant