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?

  • knight_alva@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    6
    ·
    13 hours ago

    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.

  • MrsDoyle@sh.itjust.works
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    1
    ·
    10 hours ago

    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.

  • Fizz@lemmy.nz
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    5
    ·
    14 hours ago

    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.

  • EponymousBosh@awful.systems
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    4
    ·
    15 hours ago

    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.)

  • hperrin@lemmy.ca
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    7
    ·
    18 hours ago

    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.

    • Valmond@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      8 hours ago

      You just need it to be not too humid and in the dark. I have seen mummies stored like under a bench FWIW.

  • DeathByBigSad@sh.itjust.works
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    5
    ·
    17 hours ago

    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.

  • EponymousBosh@awful.systems
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    3
    ·
    15 hours ago

    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.

  • DontNoodles@discuss.tchncs.de
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    3
    ·
    15 hours ago

    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.

      • Flax@feddit.uk
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        edit-2
        8 hours ago

        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