@article {Lafrancemedhum-2020-012031, author = {Marc Lafrance}, title = {{\textquoteleft}That is the skin of my brother{\textquoteright}: alterity, hybridity and media representations of facial transplantation}, elocation-id = {medhum-2020-012031}, year = {2021}, doi = {10.1136/medhum-2020-012031}, publisher = {Institute of Medical Ethics}, abstract = {In this paper, I explore the 2012 face transplant performed on US recipient Richard Norris and how it was represented by the media as a {\textquoteleft}makeover story{\textquoteright}. Informed by press coverage from the date of the transplant to the present day, I examine a widely viewed and critically acclaimed investigative report that aired on CBS{\textquoteright}s 60 Minutes entitled {\textquoteleft}My Brother{\textquoteright}s Keeper{\textquoteright}. Through a close reading of both its form and content, I claim that the report{\textquoteright}s makeover story consists of four key themes: heroic medicine and miraculous science; appearance-based stigma and social alienation; appearance-based conformity and social assimilation; and subjective alterity and embodied hybridity. In doing so, I contend that the report{\textquoteright}s themes contain the widespread ambivalence about facial transplantation by confirming prevailing assumptions about medical science and how it creates normal people who live good lives. That said, I also contend that the report{\textquoteright}s themes complicate these assumptions by highlighting how facial transplantation invariably involves immediate encounters with otherness and corporeal interconnectedness. I conclude that the report{\textquoteright}s makeover story{\textemdash}characterised as it is by the constraints of the before-and-after format{\textemdash}must be rethought and, ultimately, reworked if we wish to do justice to face transplant recipients.Data sharing is not applicable as no data sets were generated and/or analysed for this study.}, issn = {1468-215X}, URL = {https://mh.bmj.com/content/early/2021/04/27/medhum-2020-012031}, eprint = {https://mh.bmj.com/content/early/2021/04/27/medhum-2020-012031.full.pdf}, journal = {Medical Humanities} }