I’ve been browsing antique jewelry a lot lately and wonder about this. With jewelry specifically I think about hair, coral, pearls.
Then that extends out to animal skins, bones, human relics, etc.
What makes one thing gross but the other okay?
Wait till you think about where your water’s been.
I have no issues with drinking recycled water. I’ve even had beer made from treated wastewater. Never again! (Because I’m gluten intolerant.)
Running through Belgians like cheap beer!
The water that I shoot at my butt or the water I put in my mouth?
Insertable sex toys and nothing else I can think of
What we find gross is mostly arbitrary and emotional. It’s loosely based on the perception of filth but most people who find something gross will continue to find that thing gross even if they know it’s clean. If someone feels like snakes are gross, they watch you take a snake and scrub it clean with soap and water (don’t actually do this obviously) and you try to hand them the scrubbed snake, most people would continue to call it gross. Furthermore, if you ask most people why they find something gross, they won’t be able to give you a real answer. (Food seems to be an exception but we mean something entirely different and much more specific when calling food gross unless we are saying that the food is somehow foul or unclean)
In most cases, when someone calls something gross, they are doing so as a reaction to a feeling it gives them. Whatever they say after that tends to be some form of post-hoc justification to legitimize that feeling.
Heck I don’t even eat food that was part of animals
I’m vegan btw
I bought a pretty shell necklace in Samoa, and then asked the seller what shells it was made from.
He said… “Dolphin’s teeth.”
When I reeled back in horror, he chuckled and said, “Yum yum.”
I have various bits of jewellery made from beef bone, I happily wear leather, but there was something intimate about teeth that made it gross, plus eating dolphins, argh.
If I look at an object and I’m reminded that it comes from a dead human or creature i probably wont keep it.
An old jacket is ok because i just see a cool jacked but a tiger skin rug would always remind me of a dead tiger.
What about a tiger skin jacket with the head as a hood?
Yeah i’ll pass on wearing a corpse around.
I’ve been pondering this myself. We had to have one of my cats (the one in my profile pic) put down last month, and we got a fur clipping, as well as her ashes. I’d like a piece of memorial jewelry or glass and I’m finding I’m OK with stuff that includes the fur, but not OK with cremation jewelry/cremation glass, and I don’t really know how to articulate why. I think part of it is that fur and hair are shed throughout a lifetime anyway, but dividing up someone’s bones or ashes almost feels like commodification to me.
(To be clear: I’m not judging other people who do this with their loved ones’ remains, be they human or animal; this is just, like, my opinion, man.)
None? Owning a mummy would be dope, although the storage and care required wouldn’t be.
You just need it to be not too humid and in the dark. I have seen mummies stored like under a bench FWIW.
Also: you might like Caitlin Doughty/Ask A Mortician’s videos and/or books. A lot of discussion about different cultures’ approaches to death and how people’s attitudes have evolved over time.
I got a cool looking salt shaker that looks like a crow and is made of buffalo horn. I’m fine with it sitting on my shelf but don’t see myself using it for its intended purpose on my dining table.
If it’s generally socially acceptable, and I’ve gotten used to it, I’ll usually be ok with it. Otherwise, I’ll probably be grossed out by it. I know that’s dumb, but at least I’m being honest.
Depends on how liquidy it is.
Skin and organs are no-no
Dried skeleton, maybe.
If its “artificial life forms” like a non-carbon based robot, I’d happily gouge its “eyes” (cameras) and put then in a necklace.
If it’s human
Does that include the ashes of people in urns?
Mostly, yes. I saw someone say something about wearing a deceased loved-one. That’s understandable. But if you somehow obtained the remains of some random person, that’s… Eugh
Although in my culture we don’t really cremate but I understand that others do
I don’t mind it as long as it wasn’t part of their body, like their skull. That does freak me out.
If it still looks like it did when it was alive: Shrimp with tails on, whole fish, that sort of thing is too far.
What about a death mask?
I’ve never eaten one, what’s that?