At the beginning of the book, Orwell describes Winston as smallish and thin, with very fair hair, and a skin made rough by years of shaving and using coarse soap. Later, after being tortured in the Ministry of Love, he is described as a "bowed, grey-coloured, skeleton-like thing" with rotting teeth and little hair. By the end of the book he has put on some weight and been given false teeth, so no longer looks quite so bad.