Looking for a term for a particular experience

May 25, 2024 2:34 PM

I'm hoping to find out what people would call the experience of being... temporarily socially acceptable, for lack of a better term. I find it very disorienting how now, in my thirties, people are usually pleasant, kind, and accommodating to me. They weren't when I was a child, and I know they won't be when I'm elderly.

I've heard similar things from people who lost a lot of weight or gained a visible disability. I'd like to read about people's experiences, but I don't know what to call it so I can start looking.

posted by wheatlets to Human Relations (17 answers total)

This isn’t the term, BUT I will say that when I lost a significant amount of weight I related to some people’s experiences of “passing.” Passing can mean a lot of things, but think of a gay person taken as straight, a light-skinned black person being perceived as white, etc.
posted by kapers at 2:53 PM on May 25

I think of this as another version of privilege.
posted by dreamphone at 3:00 PM on May 25

Right, being in the "prime" of adulthood is a sort of privilege - old enough to be taken seriously as an adult, but not old enough to be discriminated against for being "too" old. I'm not sure there is a term for fleeting/temporally contingent privilege though.
posted by coffeecat at 3:04 PM on May 25

What you're feeling is called confidence and what you're receiving is called respect.
posted by winterportage at 3:47 PM on May 25

second. also: habitus
as the wiki says, a cornerstone of the philosophy of Pierre Bourdieu. quick description:
“socialized norms or tendencies that guide behaviors & thinking”
There’s also a book
posted by HearHere at 3:51 PM on May 25

social privilege
posted by Iris Gambol at 4:50 PM on May 25

Ageism? (Social privilege courtesy of age can be transient.) Ageism in Youth Studies; The End Game: How Inequality Shapes Our Final Years.
posted by Iris Gambol at 5:00 PM on May 25

having social currency
being the 'it' demographic
posted by dum spiro spero at 6:09 PM on May 25

I would go with Prime. You’re in the prime of life.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 6:31 PM on May 25

The Halo Effect might be worth your time to research as well to see if that resonates.
posted by blue suede stockings at 7:25 PM on May 25

I am male and when I was younger I mostly had very long hair. I have a very distinct memory of social ease and acceptance that I experienced when I cut my hair. It was like all of a sudden I wasn’t pushing against a wall just be around other people in public.

I don’t know if there is a specific word for it. It feels like it should be French word, meaning at home in one’s habitat or something about acceptance.
posted by Winnie the Proust at 8:41 PM on May 25

I think of moving from a marked to an unmarked group, but I don’t have a word for it. Maybe the Sneeches do.
posted by clew at 9:08 PM on May 25

There is a lot to unpack in what you are experiencing.

Your appearance makes such a difference to how you are treated, I notice this goes beyond age. My two boys are 11 months apart but couldn’t look more different, my older boy is large for his age and brown hair and brown eyes. He was constantly picked on and complained about by a couple of his teachers for his abilities. His younger brother was far less able and was later diagnosed with autism- but nobody ever complained about him. In fact, when I raised concerns they would defend him. I SWEAR it was because he had blond hair and blue eyes and a cute angelic face.

Moving on from that, through this experience I’ve found that I’ve experienced being treated a lot of different ways depending on how I/we present and are perceived. When I am with my kids and they are behaving awful I am treated terribly (bad mother), when I am alone and have make up on (calm attractive woman) it switches again. I live in a country that’s different from my country of origin and I speak the local language badly- so when I open my mouth, treatment can change again if it’s someone from an older generation or who has strong feelings about integration or maybe they’re just frustrated.

So I would say that your appearance and presentation are stable right now and it is such that you are well perceived and doing and being how people expect.

You might find reading about intersectionalities interesting…. I like that framework for understanding how different barriers add up, and I guess you could look at it the other way too- privilege adds up too.
posted by pairofshades at 12:42 AM on May 26

I'm not sure there is a term for fleeting/temporally contingent privilege though.

I mean, age and disability is coming for all of us, if we're not cut down in our prime.

All privilege relies on external validation, and external validation is always contingent. Some privileges are more robust than others - wealth's gonna be pretty stable in a capitalist economy - but you could still end up in a situation where it will become meaningless, at least temporarily, but maybe when it matters most (see for instance that Palm d'Or winning film about the luxury cruise passengers stranded on a lonely island).

I feel people used to have a better awareness of how fleeting it all is, the fickleness of fortune and public esteem, the futile vanity of earthly glories. That used to be the big selling point of religions, who promised to build their kingdoms on less shaky ground and were therefore highly invested in cultural messaging about this (Sic transit gloria mundi! Memento Mori! The whole vanitas-aesthetique in Baroque art; we come from dust and will all go to dust, etc). It may be different in a culture more dominated by religious ideas where earthly glories are supposed to reflect predestination for divine rewards and people will buy into the prosperity gospel.

That said, one important part of any privilege can be the sense of ease and entitlement of those born to it, a certainly mentality and poise that can be hugely beneficial in many situations, until it isn't (sure, people say they hate the entitlement, but they do love the ease). I think all privileges are contingent, but it does seem useful to distinguish between privileges of birth and acquired privileges, which often don't seem to confer the same serene placidity.
posted by sohalt at 5:36 AM on May 26

Sorry, I realize that none of the above answers your actual question. I've seen a fair bit of writing about this along the axis of social class, eg by French authors coming from a working class background, achieving middle class status through education and professional success and as a result feeling alienated from both classes (eg. Annie Ernaux, Didier Eribon)
posted by sohalt at 6:06 AM on May 26

I don't have a term for this, but your question reminded me of one my favorite Ask Polly columns, about a girl who was suddenly attracted to her guy friend when he lost weight. Polly digs in a little bit to what's going on; it's not much but I found it interesting.
posted by gideonfrog at 8:28 AM on May 26

It sounds like you had abusive family and/or an unaccepting environment growing up. You're now an adult with power over your own life and you're no longer in that environment.
posted by kingdead at 8:33 AM on May 26