those who were seen dancing

Makeup is a tricky issue with me, because there are the social norms around beauty and "looking polished" and then there are other social norms that I sometimes use it for, like "looking like I have had some sleep when I haven't" or "looking like I have not in fact been crying." So like what you said about "good hygiene" -- there are social norms at play, but they can be complex ones.

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I think the social norms that influence any decision are complicated more often than not. Yeah, there's the obvious "girls wear makeup" or "girls shave" norm, but there's also the desire to not disrupt things, to look like you have it together, etc.

And then there's the whole thing with feeding into norms you're not even conscious of being influenced by.

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Absolutely. And sometimes I feel like I'm just being an aging punk when I go a little out of my way to not conform, but then I consider that it actually does help shift the norms for other people.... F'rinstance, I remember how nice it was the first time I realized I was in a gathering (in the U.S.) where more than 3/4 of the women did not shave under their arms! The more we defy the standards, the more acceptable making choices that defy the standards becomes.

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rackletang.livejournal.com

I think it varies from individual to individual. Sometimes, a person just wants to feel smooth, or be more aerodynamic (as in swimmers), or something. Sometimes they feel ashamed if they wear a skirt and don't have perfectly smooth legs, or if they wear a tank top and their pits are au naturel. I personally think it's more often societal pressures than personal preference, but I have no numbers to back that up, it's just a suspicion of mine.

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I have so much fun with the tourists on the subway in the summertime... I stand and hold the overhead bar just so they can get a full and unobstructed view of my Rapunzel-esque pit hair. I used to try to be a bit unobtrusive about my unshavenness but saying "fuck that" is way more entertaining.

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rackletang.livejournal.com

And this is why I love you. :)

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fooltheworld.livejournal.com

That rather describes me. I rarely shave in winter because I don't care. But if anything is going to be exposed I shave it. I'm a sheeple! Argh! LOL

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My own answer... I don't think you can completely divorce your own preference from your social conditioning (which includes the pressure to conform), ever. Even preferences that run counter to the norm have some root in being counter to the norm.

That said, I think individuals tend to perceive their preferences as independent, and that sometimes that perception is much more important to the conversation than the fact of social conditioning.

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snidegrrl.livejournal.com

What you said.

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To use my own hair removal as examples... Personal aesthetics can include tactile sensations, not just visual. It drives me nuts to have a coarse hair on my chin; I find myself fiddling with them incessantly. On the other hand (er, leg), when I do succumb to social/cultural pressure to remove my leg hair (pretty much only ever for a family member's wedding), I like the way it feels on the first day, but that tactile sensation isn't reason enough for me to do it all the time.

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thelicia-w.livejournal.com

While I selected "sometimes," I really mean "partially." Whether we like it or not, we cannot completely escape our culture. And, while personal aesthetic preferences should be "personal," our culture does have a considerable amount of impact on what our preferences might be.

Personally, I'd love to be able to completely separate the two, but I just don't think that it's going to happen. We're too embedded in our culture, too concerned with what other people think. While I admit that there are those people who are capable of challenging the "acceptable limits," I also admit that I'm not exactly one of them when it comes to most things.

What's interesting about this is that it leads me to question exactly "why" I do the things that I do. Why do I choose to follow some of my culture's norms for personal aesthetics, and not others? I'm not entirely sure, but some of it comes down to convenience and/or laziness. I'm going to have to think about this a bit more before I can come up with a more concrete answer than this.

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I can answer why I follow some norms and not others, if that's of interest - the effort it would take to fight them is a big part of it. Not just within myself, but with other people. So, norms that apply to how I behave at work (ie what a "professional appearance" includes) I tend not to spend much energy on fighting.

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thelicia-w.livejournal.com

Good point. I'm stuck with the "professional appearance" norms, particularly because I teach at a rather conservative university. I always look professional, but I'm definitely not a fashonista, unlike many of my counterparts. Certain things just take too much energy to fight, but there's no way that I'm going to wear a short skirt and heels when it's -35C with a foot of snow . . . no matter what anyone says.

When I think about it, I have to agree that effort is a big part of why I do and don't do certain things. Some stuff I just can't be bothered with, as it just takes up too much of my time (something I usually have very little of). Certain things are just going to take too much effort to fight, and I have enough of that to do because of my feminist leanings, so I don't want to take on any more than I have to. Yeah . . . I'm copping out, but I've only got so much time and energy.

However, I swear that the next male faculty member who tells me that I'd look so much better if I "dressed properly" (whatever that is) or "wore more makeup" is going to get a dressing down. I don't wear much makeup, I don't "do" my hair (it's combed, clean, and in a pony tail, and that's all), and I don't wear skirts and/or heels. I'm there to teach, and get irritated when societal conventions count for more than my teaching abilities. Meh.

Well, it seems that my short answer has taken on a life of its own. What I was trying to get at is that I agree with you that it comes down to effort, both in terms of the time certain things take and in terms of the effort that it takes to convince people that I'm not a social deviant because I don't, for example, wear tonnes of makeup.

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firecat

I don't think they can be separated, but I do think that social pressures affect personal preferences in a lot of different ways. Some people develop preferences against the norm, frex. So I don't assume that every time someone is making an aesthetic change, it's because of conformity.

I do think that a lot of people downplay the role of social pressure in their choices, though.

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skelkins.livejournal.com

I don't think they can ever be wholly separated, for the same reason that I don't think the question "what would you be like if you had been raised in a completely different culture?" can ever be truly answered. Social norms--and the corresponding body of attitudes and beliefs about conforming to them--play far too intrinsic a role in our development as people for anyone not to be very strongly influenced by them. I think that even non-conforming aesthetics (and sometimes especially them!) are molded and formed by thet social norms with which we were raised.

For example, I have a marked sexual preference for men who register within my own culture as "feminine," or at least as "androgynous." But would I have that same preference had I been raised in Bali, where a similar type of grace and delicacy to that which I find so attractive is instead a social marker of "masculinity?"

To tell you the truth, I have no idea whether I would or not. It strikes me as perfectly conceivable that were I Balinese, I would instead find myself attracted to a completely different physical/kinetic type--in other words, I recognize the possibility that my tastes were formed, on some subconscious level, as a reaction against my own culture's prevailing standards of "masculinity."

I think it also perfectly believable, though, that my tastes would remain constant. Even if that were the case, though, my tastes would still be different tastes, because they would have been for all of my life attached to a very different cultural meaning.

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Even if that were the case, though, my tastes would still be different tastes, because they would have been for all of my life attached to a very different cultural meaning.

Yes, absolutely.

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I don't know how to answer this. On the one hand, I think we need to acknowledge how societal pressure shapes us. On the other, I'm loath to say or suggest that this means there really are no such things as personal preferences.

This is where some theory confuses and upsets me. I really think the point that we don't exist in a vacuum is an important one, but at the same time we need to be able to see, recognize, and understand the limits to societal coercion -- otherwise resistance becomes incomprehensible, like free will often does in larger debates.

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I don't think that recognizing that all personal choices have social context is remotely limiting to free will. To me, it's just the opposite - recognition of how your choices influence and are influenced by others is very empowering.

I'll admit it can lead to some serious navelgazing of the "why do I want this" variety, but I think we tend to err to the wrong side - to thinking that personal choice is entirely independent and inviolable.

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I totally disagree with you there. Part of the reason I was profoundly loath for many years to call myself a feminist is because the reasoning I saw in the theory seemed to go like this:

Do you shave your legs or don't you?
Sometimes I do.
And why do you?
Because I like the feel of smooth skin.
Why do you like that?
Come again?
Well, [explanation of social context.]
Shit. I never thought of that. I'd better not do that then. And here I was thinking it felt cool, but I can't possibly prove to myself or anyone else that I think that for reasonas that are okay. Well, if my reasons are bad, there goes that.
[Time passes.]
Hmm. I still really like it when my skin is smooth.
[Shaves legs.]
I can't stop thinking that I like that because some guy somewhere back in history decided I'd be sexy with little girl legs. Yuck.
[Grows them back out.]
Hey, I miss my... Oh, whatever.

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Or, for something that actually matters:

Are you into SM?
Yes.
Why?
I don't know.
Well, don't you realize that the patriarchy came up with domination and submission to... etc.
Oh shit. Forget that then. Wait... why does it still make me feel good?

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OT for a sec - WHAT is going on with your icon? The text, I mean? ;)

Back on topic... Honestly, I think feminist arguments against BDSM are stretching it. You raised what I think is a useful criticism of feminism, that it can become dictatorial, proscribing preferences as unfeminist without examining the complexities behind them. Like the power thing in heterosex; you could assume all power exchange in sex is patriarchal ergo bad, but then you'd be using overly simplistic logic and actually ignoring big parts of the cultural context of BDSM.

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My icon is a joke stretched to the outer limits of recognition. :)

Way back when, there was some sort of thing spreading around the Internet of someone who claimed to have -- I think it was a pic of one of the actors in the LOTR movies, nude. It was clearly a fake, and people made fun of it by saying "He says, 'MY HED IZ PASTEDE ON YAY!1!11!!!!!1!'"

So there were a few icons and such floating about reading MY HED IZ PASTEDE ON YAY!!11!!!

I decided to make that the text of my icon because, in a supreme twist of whateverness, his mask is actually pasted on in a sense, so it's funny.

You raised what I think is a useful criticism of feminism, that it can become dictatorial, proscribing preferences as unfeminist without examining the complexities behind them.

:)

Yeah. Occasionally people espouse stuff like that, which can still make me uncomfortable. But I'm really grateful that I learned that's not what feminism is, and very grateful to the women who took the time to listen through my anger and understand and explain why feminism isn't about that.

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skelkins.livejournal.com

Is it possible to agree with both of you?

I think that it is beneficial for people to examine the possible cultural conditionings underlying their own aesthetic preferences, if for no other reason than that I'm a believer in the gnothi sauthon principle.

Ascribing motives (even unconscious ones) to other people, on the other hand, is just plain rude, and I do think that it is far too often used as a means of harassing others about preferences not to the perpetrator's liking.

Sadly, this does seem to be a very popular form of rudeness, and one that is in my experience by no means the exclusive province of the challengers of the cultural status quo.

As for BDSM, that's one of those situations where my own personal answer to the soul-searching is: "I'm certain that the reason I find it a turn-on is because of some really nasty social factors, but what of it? In other areas of my life I work hard to try to make my society less power-obsessed and more egalitarian. If that goal should ever be reached, then maybe it's possible that people in the future would find BDSM very alien indeed. Does that thought bother me? No, not really."

BTW, your icon makes me giggle madly every time I see it.

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I don't think

trinityva and I completely disagree (though hey, I may be wrong). Or at least, I think the same guidelines apply to questioning others' choices as to any polite conversation: you can't assume your perspective is 100% right, and you have to actually listen/be open to other information.

What is this gnothi sauthon, by the way?

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skelkins.livejournal.com

Gnothi Sauton="Know Thyself" in Greek. It was supposedly carved in stone over the entrance to the Oracle at Delphi.

Sorry, didn't mean to be obscure. I'm just a big ol' classics geek.

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Oh, I agree with you. I think we do need to examine these things. That's why I wasn't sure whether my answer to the poll was "Yes" or "Well, yeah, and..."

As for BDSM, that's one of those situations where my own personal answer to the soul-searching is: "I'm certain that the reason I find it a turn-on is because of some really nasty social factors, but what of it? In other areas of my life I work hard to try to make my society less power-obsessed and more egalitarian. If that goal should ever be reached, then maybe it's possible that people in the future would find BDSM very alien indeed. Does that thought bother me? No, not really."

The interesting thing for me there is that I think my personal answers are different.

I don't think it's obvious to me that my desires for BDSM totally stem from social weirdness. They're not about gender roles or conceptions of femininity. Some of my top persona may be problematically masculine, but if it is then I suppose so's the rest of me, in similar ways.

I see them as stemming from having to come to terms with physical pain, due to the physical parts of my abuse and several surgeries I endured as an adolescent. My relationship to pain changed drastically. I began to think a lot about the different ways we as humans experience pain, see it as a warning or a benefit or a curse, and why. I began to notice that certain emotional states, arousal being one of them, could radically alter how I and others experience pain. I found that, and find that, endlessly fascinating.

I think I find control fascinating for reasons that tie much more to this than directly to patriarchy, though I recognize that the sorts of harrowing nonconsensual experiences with control that happened when I was abused may well have imprinted problematic associations with "hierarchy" and oppressive systems in general.

To me, it's much more about SM than anything else (though I do a bit of everything), about using the body's natural systems and drugs to play with and craft experience. For people who are more strongly D/sers, perhaps societal expectations' influence is more blatantly obvious.

I think BDSM might look very different if there were no patriarchy/white supremacy/such hierarchies. But I do not think that sort of crafting of experience would not exist. The body is complex and interesting, and playing with its reactions and responses seems quite natural to me. As does playing with the mind's reactions to experience as well.

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See, I actually think that's a useful dialog with your imaginary self, there. Cause then you can choose to either accept that you have a preference of indeterminate origin that's in line with what others expect of women - or you can try to retrain yourself to a preference that doesn't enforce the shaving norm for other women/girls. It depends on how much fight you want to fight. I'd rather be aware of that than blissfully ignorant of the effect of my choices.

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