personal aesthetics?

[keryx]

A followup, based on the predominance of people saying they remove hair solely based on "personal aesthetics" in my hair poll.

[Poll #412789]

Explain the logic of your answer in comments, if you'd be so kind.

Comments

[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.

[keryx.livejournal.com]

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.