I’ve been interested in the concept of “shells” for a long time. Several of my stories from my old pen name use the word “shell” explicitly. In a way, all of my stories revolve around shells.
Mostly, “shell,” or any synonym of it, are words I use to describe something that seems to function as a container but in actuality doesn’t merely exist “on the outside.”
If there can be such a thing as a “fashion statement,” and clothes aren’t even attached to one’s body and it’s generally accepted that they can be changed in whichever way, yet it is also generally accepted that fashion is indeed a statement of a person’s core being…
…then of course the skin–as in, the collection of everything that is externalized as part the body in general–isn’t just sitting there atop some core that is detached from the world.