Looking Deviant (FINAL) Flashcards
What 3 common features tie different forms of appearance and deviance together?
- Varies over time and place, according to the current cultural standards
- Provokes labelling, stigmatization, and exclusion
- Potential to change social forms
What are appearance norms?
Shared notions about beauty that attract us to some people and not to others.
Appearance norms are often:
measurable (body size, dress, adornments)
Appearance norms lead to:
ridiculing or sanctioning people who do not meet our culture’s standards of beauty
Who feels appearance norms most historically?
Women (most valued for beauty and fertility)
According to Merton, one can respond to appearance norms in one of two ways:
- Conformity/Ritualism
- Innovation/Rebellion
Individuals want to avoid normlessness and not belonging
Conformity/Ritualism
An acceptance of norms and an effort to reproduce them
Innovation/Rebellion
A rejection of norms and an attempt to live by new appearance rules
Those with more objective interests study:
The deviant person, behaviour, or characteristic
Positivist approaches
Those with more subjective interests study:
The perceptions of and reactions to the act
Interpretive and critical approaches
Appearance Functionalist Theory
Appearance functions as a way to know an individual’s or group’s values by looking at them and promotes unity.
How appearance brings us together and represents individual and collective values/goals/conscience beneath
- What does appearance say about the group’s values?
Maintain group membership via appearance
Bodily beauty as a cultural goal present a strong risk of anomie because:
beauty is largely innate (natural)
Rebellious adaptions to appearance norms means growing the community or letting it die
- A community must give membership to a deviant appearance subculture
- The community must enforce behavioural norms within the community
Symbolic Interactionist Appearance Theories
Values we learn either oppose or support deviant behaviour
Choice to look a certain way to decide how we are perceived
Goffman’s The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life
- Appearance and Stigmatization
- Tribal stigma = stigma from features you are born with
People are motivated to seem ‘normal’ but credibility is risked by:
Discrediting or discreditable features
Discrediting vs discreditable features
Visible vs invisible
Flawed or deviant appearance is the most immediately:
visible and dangerous threat to successful self-presentation
Symbolic interactionists are particularly interested in two of the ways we learn deviant values and behaviours:
- Means of transmission (how do people learn to conform and deviate)
- Secondary deviation (what happens to people after they’ve deviated)
George Simmel argued that fashion is subject to an inner irony
All items of appearance are individual (expressions of self)
All items are social (expressions of community)
Fashion is a process of constant negotiation between the:
individual and society
Always trying to be individualistic but still fit into social standards
Dramaturgical approach
Impression management on the front-stage
Narrative approach
Body art tells the stories of people’s lives
- These stories are interpreted by others within a larger structure of power in society
What are the 4 types of body projects?
- Camouflaging
- Extending
- Adapting
- Redesigning
Camouflaging
Normative processes (i.e makeup)
Extending
Overcoming limitations (i.e glasses)
Adapting
Effortful changes (i.e weight loss)
Redesigning
Permanent changes (i.e tattoos and piercings)
Critical Appearance Theories
Unequal power determines who has the right to declare what is normal and abnormal
Always battling individuality vs power of those who determine what is normal/deviant
Consumerist society is geared toward making people
hate themselves and feel discontented
People with less power use deviant acts to
challenge and rebel against the norms instituted by those in power
Critical Theory: Bourdieu’s Distinction
Suggested that relations of dominance in society are maintained through the exercise of ‘taste’ amid the illusion of free choice
- An actor will acquire the habitus of their position, pursuing activities designated for the Social Space (field)
- Appearance will reflect ones cultural/social capital
According to Veblen, imitation is central to fashion
Social imitation is (according to sociological thought) a means of amassing social and cultural capital
- Conspicuous consumption/conspicuous leisure
- Invidious comparison
- Pecuniary emulation
Conspicuous consumption
Buying brand names, judging others and awareness of doing it and that others do it as well, therefore present self as how one wants to be seen, all things we buy is to gain certain acceptance
Conspicuous leisure
Behaviours done during nonwork time that provide evidence of status
Invidious comparison
Choice between two things is unfair because the two things are very different or equally good/bad
Pecuniary emulation
A person’s economic efforts to surpass a rich person’s socioeconomic status
Appearance communities are created through
powerful needs for social cohesion
Deviant appearance communities are made up of
people committed to achieving beauty in unconventional ways
Joining communities via self-marginalization is a form of
intentional deviance
Unintended deviance
Eating disorders and social norms
- How are people in society excluded and/or abused based on eating disorders
Appearance and social change
Feminist Approaches to Appearance
The appearance industries encourage women to strive for features that are almost impossible to achieve
- By failing to meet these standards, women may feel they have failed in their roles as women
The male gaze
The “Ideal” Body According to Science
Based on health risks (i.e harm)
BMI (body mass index): <18.5 = underweight 18.5-24.99 = ideal 25.0-29.9 = overweight 30.0+ = obese
