Learning Unit Objectives:

• Evaluate personal values and paradigms around body decoration and physical beauty.
• Investigate how physical appearance affects definitions of identity and belonging.
• Analyze values and belief systems of physical appearance across cultures, sub-cultures and generations.

Artifact: Adornment personal reflection

For this unit we were asked to reflect about our personal choices when it came to our day to day dress and the way that we adorned ourselves. These choices were in many ways connected with our value system that we discussed in the first week of class, and we were asked to speak about these values as well as the values that our family and peers shared.

I had never spent a lot of time thinking about how what I decided to wear from day to day or the personal adornments like my tattoos and rings played in important role in the kind of values I held in my life. What I really enjoyed about this unit was that I although for quite some time I thought that my values differed greatly from my parents and my friends, they were all either similar or very closely related. I think that it is important to share at least some similar values to those that are close to you because it is a way to keep you connected, but it is also important to have differing values because it creates a system of challenging each other and growing from that.

In the future I think that this unit will come into play in my life more and more as I grow and change and get older, and in time gain and lose friends. It is not a hope that I lose any of the friends now, or that I think I will outgrow them in anyway, but I know that as time goes on I will meet and connect with different people as my values in life change. What I value now as a 22 year old student will be different than what I value when I am 30 years old, possibly and hopefully married and settling down in my life and career. In turn I will reflect these values in my dress and adornment. This isn’t to say that at 30 I wouldn’t consider getting a new tattoo, but the chances of me wearing crop tops in the summer time, or even a skirt with knee high socks to work in the fall are very slim. My life and personal adornments will change as I change what is important in my day to day life.

Source: Sanders, C. R. (1989). Introduction: Body Alteration, Artistic Production, and the Social World of Tattooing. In Customizing the Body (pp. 1-35). Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.