Cannibalism - #7: Skin

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TRANSCRIPT OF EPISODE: Cannibalism (munching) “could you eat a whole human being? (more munching) With the help of a doctor, a scientist and a chef, I set out to see if it’s possible. Cannibalism: part seven – skin”. (burp)

The only thing that serial killers and cannibals think that human skin good for is making a suit.

Infamously, Ed Gein sewed a suit made of women’s skin, including leggings made of leg flesh, a corset with breasts, a belt made of nipples and masks flayed from female faces, so he could literally "become his mother and crawl into her skin"; as well as lamp shades, a bongo, bowls made of skulls, nine vulvae in a shoe box, lips as a window shade drawstring and a female nipple doorbell, to name but a few.

And although suspected of being a cannibal, as he had gutted a body like a deer and a heart was said to have been “found in a pan on the stove”; he only confessed to grave-robbing, no tooth marks were found on any bones or flesh, and the heart was actually in a plastic bag, by the pot, and not in the pot.

Problem is that by itself when the fat and meat is stripped away, skin is not great as a treat to eat.
Covering 2 to 3 square meters and weighing between 3 ½ and 10 kilos, skin is the largest organ in the human body. Comprising of the epidermis, dermis and hypodermis, a square inch is made up of 19 million skin cells and contains 300 sweat glands, 20 blood vessels and 1000 nerve endings. Although just 2mm at its thickest and as thin as 0.07mm, skin produces melanin, brings oxygen and nutrients to your cells, removes waste, regulates your heat, and protects you against UV light and pollution.

It renews itself every 28 days – which makes a very fresh part of the body shedding 30,000 skin cells a minute – but the outer layer is made up of between 10 to 30 thin layers of dead skin cells. Delicious.

So, if Steve were to have his skin flayed off – but no fat, because our cannibal is dieting – those 7 kilos (or 15 ½ lbs) of skin could provide roughly 13,000 calories, enough for about 5 days, being full of carbs, proteins, fats and vitamin c.  But as cannibals in the palaeolithic era discovered, “skin was a last resort”, especially human, as without the meat and the fat, skin is merely an effective seal for preserving it.

That said, with 167,000 people dying each day, if we put our morals aside, with an average of 22 square feet of skin each, our daily death toll could provide 3.65 million square feet of skin a day, and needing 45 square feet to make a leather jacket, daily we could clothe the world in 81,600 Fonzy-style jackets.

But would that ever happen? No.

Visually, skin is the most personal part of a human body, it makes us unique without needing to move or make a sound. It is significant in many religions (as with the symbolic eating of the body of Christ), the flaying of skin is used as war trophies (like in 1571, when Marcantonio Bragadin, General of the Venetian resistance was flayed, his skin stuffed with straw and paraded along the streets riding an ox), and even for proven cannibals – like the Korowai of Indonesia’s Papua – although no longer practiced, they still encourage tales of flaying and the eating of human flesh to keep any Westerners away.

As for serial killers, the heart and the brain is a symbolic meal, but the skin is more of a souvenir.
Armin Miewes said he was motived to become a cannibal as he always wanted a brother and this way "someone could be part of me", although it’s uncertain if that was true. And in 2000, having stabbed her boyfriend 37 times, Katherine Knight flayed his skin, hung it on a meat hook, and as his decapitated head cooked in a pot, she laid table settings for his kids, with plates of his flesh served with vegetables and gravy. As a victim of a violent and abusive relationship, if that’s not purely symbolic, what is?

Without the fat and meat, skin isn’t a meal, but a protective layer, a symbolic gesture, or a souvenir.

So, maybe in this case, cannibals have got it right?

Karl Denke, the Cannibal of Münsterberg, who supposedly sold human flesh at the market, not only had jars of flesh curing in salt, two tubs of meat pickling in brine, skinned bones and pots of bubbling fat for eating and selling, but he also sewed himself some gentleman’s apparel; with shoelaces wound from skin and hair, and belts flayed from the chest (avoiding the nipples) and occasionally the pubis.

And maybe that’s why, when we eat animals, we choose not to anthropomorphise them. A cannibal wants to see another human as a meal not a best mate, as (like us chomping on a piggy) we don’t want to be reminded of who or what they were, as a bacon sandwich is yummy, but not if it’s smiled at you.

Imagine tucking into Steve’s lightly tanned flesh, and you’re reminded of his last holiday in the Algarve, his appendix scar, a tattoo of his kid’s names, the cigarette stain on his lips, and his battle with eczema. Even if you’re starving to death, would you still be hungry enough to eat his scabs? I thought not.

Join me tomorrow to examine a zombie’s favourite part of the human body – the brain.