Dig deeper.You hear a lot about skin these days, and all the products, moisturizers, makeup, makeovers, soaps, masks, and lotions that you “need” to take care of that skin. This book isn’t about that.It’s about something much deeper―the “skin” you have inside that holds together the things like your passions, dreams, thoughts, beliefs, and ideas that make you who you are. Uniquely created and loved by God, this skin contains your inner beauty―and understanding its power can help you overcome the anxieties, insecurities, and fears the outer world presents.Find out what it means to celebrate, accept, love, and care for the skin that really matters. Crystal Kirgiss teaches writing at Purdue University and is the author or co-author of more than ten books, including What’s Up With Boys?, Sex Has A Pricetag, Girls, Guys, and A Teenager’s Daily Prayer Book. She’s been married to Mark, a Young Life area director, for 25 years and they have three college-aged sons. Crystal also writes the monthly “Guys” and “Girls” columns for YouthWalk magazine. More Than skin deep A Guide to Self and Soul By Crystal Kirgiss ZONDERVAN Copyright © 2011 Crystal Kirgiss All right reserved. ISBN: 978-0-310-66926-5 Contents Acknowledgements......................................7Chapter 1 Skin versus skin............................9Chapter 2 Skin Crisis, Part I.........................21Chapter 3 Skin Crisis, Part II........................35Chapter 4 Questions, Part I...........................51Chapter 5 Questions, Part II..........................65Chapter 6 Beauty......................................91Chapter 7 Fashion.....................................101Chapter 8 Shoes.......................................115Chapter 9 Boyfriends and Romance......................123Chapter 10 Skin Care..................................139P.S.: Going More than Skin Deep.......................151Appendix: Advice from the Experts.....................152Bibliography..........................................159 Chapter One Skin versus skin Junior high wasn't my favorite time of life. Because of bizarre district boundary lines, I'd gone to an elementary school on the west side of town but then got assigned to the junior high on the east side of town. All of my elementary school friends went to the west side junior high. The new junior high. The awesome junior high. The junior high with a full-size gym and a legit cafeteria. The junior high with carpeted hallways, bright windows, and huge classrooms. But not me. Instead of walking out of my neighborhood and turning right, like I'd done for the past however-many years of my life, I now turned left—east—and walked into the great unknown. For some people, this might not have been an issue. For someone like me, who didn't have an overabundance of friends and who wasn't overly outgoing, it was a tragic moment of epic proportions. I headed east that first day with faint hopes of building a new life for myself, convinced that things couldn't get any worse than they already were. Wrong. Kids from three different elementary schools attended my junior high, so in theory the students knew only one-third of their new classmates and were strangers to the other two-thirds. In that sense, my situation as the new kid wasn't totally hopeless. But instead of getting placed in a typical homeroom where students knew only one-third of their new classmates and were strangers to the other two-thirds (decent odds for the new girl), I got placed in a section with twenty-or-so students who'd all been each others' classmates for the last two years and each others' schoolmates for the four years before that (they were in some experimental program for Talented and Gifted Students) and were all on a first-name basis with everyone . They had inside jokes. They had nicknames for each other ... nice nicknames. Nicknames of endearment. They knew each other's parents and siblings. They were—or at least it seemed to me—a family. And I was the stranger. The new girl. The outsider. Fantastic. Marvelous. Lucky me. I'd been in a similar situation in second grade when my family had moved to the other side of the suburbs halfway through the school year. I'd gotten a new home, new neighbors, new school, new teacher, new classmates, new everything , and it was kind of scary ... for about ten minutes. I'd walked into my new second-grade classroom—where everyone already knew everyone else, and everyone already had a desk, and everyone already had friends, and everyone already knew the rules and the routines, and everyone already had art projects hanging on the wall—and held my breath in panic for about three minutes, at which point a girl named Cynthia came up to me and said, "Wanna see what I'm learning how to make?" and my world was okay again. It was as easy as that. But things sometimes aren't as easy in junior high as in second grade. For me, starting at a new school wasn't as easy the se