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.
Running through Belgians like cheap beer!
Water is created and destroyed by nature, non-stop since forever.
Photosynthesis:
6CO2 + 6H2O + light energy → C6H12O6 + 6O2
I have no issues with drinking recycled water. I’ve even had beer made from treated wastewater. Never again! (Because I’m gluten intolerant.)
The water that I shoot at my butt or the water I put in my mouth?
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.
My pet snake self cleans by taking frequent baths. It’s adorable
Thank you for sharing! This is extremely helpful!
I remember seeing an informal test on this. An actor crafted a free drink in front of participants, then unwrapped a factory-new toilet brush in front of the person. They made a point of cleaning the freshly unwrapped brush in the bar sink, to ensure there wasn’t any factory-gunk on it. Then they used the brand new toilet brush to mix the drink.
Nobody would touch the drink. Even though they knew it was clean, they couldn’t overcome the instinctual disgust that was caused by seeing it mixed with a toilet brush.
My line is at wet specimens.
I don’t even mind handling dead mice for my snake to eat, and I have a few small taxidermies around. I’ve even handled human teeth and had one of my own that had to get pulled (tooth fairy stole it though)
But wet specimens creep me TF out, especially if they’ve been diaphonized. I hate to say it but I’ve even seen wet human specimens (stillborns), that is a HELL FUCKING NO from me
Insertable sex toys and nothing else I can think of
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.
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.
Really? I was assuming you’d need pretty significant climate control. Although it probably varies by type.
I have seen mummies stored like under a bench FWIW.
Was that correct, or was that one of those OMG moments?
Well I was invited to a medical museum after hours, thinking about it, the mummies in question wasn’t Egyptian “thousands of years old”, a really old one might probably need good temperature and humidity control and surveillance of other things like mold etc.
Yes, and there’s also bog or ice mummies that are preserved totally different ways. The Egyptian ones that are filled with preservatives and dehydrated probably do just need air that’s super dry.
I don’t mind it as long as it wasn’t part of their body, like their skull. That does freak me out.
I mean… how far down the rabbit hole are we going with ‘once part of a living being?’ Leather/wool/down?
Paper?
Cotton? Oil?
Plastic?
Well done! Rubber/latex?
That’s a plant. Not an animal.
was once part of a living being
He did not say animal.
Limestone
I think that’s my question, but I am realizing it could be two or more questions.
Does owning/using something that was part of a living being gross you out?
Either way, what do you consider to have been part of a living being? I think this is an especially interesting question if you do say it does gross you out.
If some things gross you out but others don’t, why?
Ethics are the big line for me. The human remains market is pretty infamous for having dubiously sourced parts - people who did not consent to having their body bought and sold.
The exhibit Body Worlds, which travels to different museums, is an example of this. Some of the bodies are likely executed prisoners, who did not consent to have their bodies displayed in this way. The US has a horrible history of treating indigenous peoples corpses with disrespect. Two of the children who died in the MOVE bombing ended up in a universities collection without the knowledge or consent of their relatives.
I would be willing to have a skeleton or preserved organs as teaching materials, if I knew the individual involved gave their consent for that use. If I ever can afford a hysterectomy I would love to preserve my uterus for that purpose. I’d love to be an articulated skeleton in a science classroom after I’m done here on earth.
The necklace made of human ears my grandpa brought back from Vietnam is totally disgusting because they’re all really shriveled up so they look like little kids’ ears now.
But he also made one from human teeth, and that’s less disturbing because maybe he just got them from a dentist’s office in Saigon, you know? I never asked him while he was still alive.
I think human parts are a hard no for me, but I’m general good with anything, though usually much less so if the product isn’t being produced incidentally.
This means cow leather is generally a okay, but crocodile is something I’ll shy away from.
Here’s a fun story… Mark Gruenwald, the creator of the Marvel superhero team “Squadron Supreme” (a pastiche of DC’s Justice League) passed away.
As part of his will, he requested that he be cremated and his ashes mixed in with the black ink on a reprint of Squadron Supreme.
https://screenrant.com/marvel-comic-printed-creators-ashes-squadron-supreme-gruenwald/
His wife was also stamping his signature in books with the ash ink.
https://teddyandtheyeti.blogspot.com/2019/05/mark-gruenwalds-ash-o-graph-in-squadron.html?m=1
Okay, that’s quite a cool memento. I might not mind that.
I think human parts are a hard no for me
I’m pretty confident we still have the kids’ baby teeth stored somewhere in a box of mementos in the basement (where all our treasured family memories / water heater are stored). I think that is my personal threshold.
You might want to move your memories some place else a little safer. You know, just in case you have an incident with your water heater.
Same for human parts for me.
Weirdly enough, I still think my preferred way to dispose of my eventual cadaver is being made into a book.
I wouldn’t want to own book me, but I love the idea of being a book. Not like a gruesome one where someone could tell right off, something more boring than that.
You would have to check the legality of that in your jurisdiction. Aaaand find someone willing to do it. It would be dope tho… As for me, I would prefer a sky burial… Return to nature man, also metal as fuck.
Oh yeah, being turned into a book is unlikely to be worth the headache for anyone involved. The tree burials that are legal in some spots is a reasonable option. Or just donation to science.
Whatever is cheapest/lowest fuss is fine. If that means I get reused or recycled great! If not, just don’t let me be a bother.
Sky burial is also awesome. Hopefully there are enough vultures to keep that up in at least some places. There’s a 99% Invisible episode that talks about collapsing vulture populations resulting in issues with doing it in India.
Oh crap, I didn’t know that. D:
If I ever were to lose a limb like a finger (and if it couldn’t be reattached) I would like to keep it like preserved in an alcohol jar or just the bone part as a good terrible conversation piece
woodworkers hate this one simple trick
I’ve discussed with family members how it would be awesome to have jewelery made from each others bones. My sister said she’d like to have my dad’s skeleton, prepped like for an anatomy class and he was up for it, but it seemed very complicated (and possibly just not allowed) and unsurprisingly expensive.
I don’t think we’re particularly morbid or gothy, just not grossed out by stuff like that. And I think having a smooth bone ring is a nicer way to remember someone you cared about than an ugly urn full of ashes.
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.
