BJDs, class, taste, and buying habits! Opinions?

I'm not sure what you're asking here. Are you asking if people on the lower end of the socioeconomic ladder have different tastes in dolls (different standards of beauty, aesthetic?) than people on the higher end of the ladder? I don't think you can make sweeping statements like, "Poor people prefer stylized dolls and wealthy people prefer realistic sculpts" or what have you. But maybe I'm misunderstanding your question.

 

I think people who spend more time researching and looking around in this hobby will generally have "more refined" tastes. When you look at something over and over, quality starts to stand out more--what impressed me a lot when I started this hobby isn't as impressive to me now. And because my tastes have improved, I'm more willing to spend more on quality products (clothes, doll sculpts, face-ups). I don't make much money, but I'll pay for nice stuff if I really want it. Now, what is considered "high quality" is another question entirely Sometimes "quality" is just "my style". My finances do limit what I'll buy, though. I wouldn't buy a $900 tiny, even if I loved it (Kinoko Juice I'm looking at you). A $1000 SD fullset is doable, though.

 

I think it is not that much about taste in itself, as it is about means and possibilities, and also honesty. Maybe it has more to do with how different classes relate with eachother than with a certain class being considered in and by itself.

Two people might have the same taste when it comes to BJDs, and wish for the same dolls and accessories; however, of course, if one of them doesn't have much money available to spend on hobbies and such, then the possibility of that person owning everything they want is limited buy how much they can spend.
So that person might either attempt to own that certain doll anyway, or they might conform with some other generic option instead... While the person who is more comfortable financially simply won't have to worry about that limitation.

So these two people end up with different collections, headed in different ways, even though they have the same taste, and we can always speculate about why that happens (and be wrong in the end).
Maybe, the person with less means simply has to find a way to enjoy the hobby with what they have. Who knows, if you ask that person, maybe they will say they are perfectly happy with their collection and wouldn't change a thing about it, when in reality, if they had enough to spend, their collection would be radically different. Maybe they even publicly reject the notion that they would love to own a certain expensive doll, simply because they know they can't have it, or that it is way too hard for them to obtain.
Maybe the person with more money will say they love this or that cheaper doll to avoid being seen as arrogant or whatever, when in reality they would never own it. Or maybe that person actually likes cheaper dolls but is entrenched in the idea that more expensive is better, and they can buy that more expensive doll, so why should they buy the cheaper one? But of course, they would deny that.

Of course, I'm not saying every one acts like that, so I hope no one will be offended by those hypothetical scenarios .

We are obviously influenced by everything that surrounds us, our parents, our society, our personal experiences, everything in our environment... But people are always lying when it comes to money, choices, feelings - well, about everything... And that makes it hard to discover why they make certain choices.
I feel like there's a degree of speculation when it comes to questions like yours..

 

Best of luck with your study!

You may already address this in your in-depth interview questions, but I just wanted to point out that there can be a major difference between the socioeconomic class in which a person was raised and their present socioeconomic status, and that someone who has a high level of education doesn't always also have a high income, especially in a country where the job market is still recovering and student loan debt can be massive - this all seems to be getting conflated in the descriptions of your project, and I'm wondering how you're going to separate the variables.

Also... it's your study and you can do what you want, but by asking that your participants own at least three dolls, you may be filtering out some socioeconomic tiers yourself because you're only requesting participants who can afford multiple expensive luxury items.

I don't mean to be critical, I just thought some feedback might be constructive.

 

Well, since this is a serious social science research project there are several things to consider regarding the BJD hobby:

1. This is very much an international hobby. Not only the social economic classes could make a difference, cultural and geographic differences could very much have an impact on people's preferences, perhaps a bigger impact. Could the fact that most of the BJD makers are from Asia also make a difference?

2. To get unbiased results one needs to consider the sample size and source. If you are asking people to volunteer how can you ensure that the people who did are not overly similar in some ways? For example, if I post a link to an online survey at 10AM and will poll 100 replies to get conclusions. Then my results could very well be biased because all my respondents are A. visitors of particular websites; B. people with free time in the late mornings/afternoons.

3. Age and experiences. How can we be sure the preferences people have are due to their social economic classes and not due to their age, past experiences with arts, doll collecting, or other interests? A lot of people in the BJD hobby have other related interests before coming into the BJD hobby and those often influence their tastes independent of their class.

Not entirely related, but there are articles regarding cultural differences regarding makeup (amount and style) dependent on class. I don't have links, it has been awhile since I read it. In some countries upper class women wore more makeup and in other countries lower class women wore more makeup. If these preferences carry over to dolls then they need to somehow be addressed.

 

I was going to comment about the international aspect too, people from different countries have different beauty standards and this also pass to dolls. Also other hobbies and likes, someone who is fan of anime and manga will have a easier time liking the feminine aesthetic of some dolls.

Talking on a more personal level I prefered feminine male dolls when I was younger, now that I'm an adult I want to see more mature manly dolls. I still like androginous dolls or even feminine male dolls, but the last I want them to get more extreme and also pass this characteristics to his body. So he would not only have a feminine face but a body with curves like of a woman. This would be more related to writen and art tastes than a beauty standard of my country.

Also the more I looked dolls more my taste changed, I started to see what sculpts were done different and original and what looked very similar to each other. I passed to noticed more how eyes, noses and mouths were sculpted. I started to wonder more how a body is easy to pose and looks more natural or if I like it enough to that I don't care.

Also that no matter the price of a doll if I want it enough I can join money if is more expenssive than normal, if I don't get a doll is okay because others will come out and I will like one of them. And having patience is better since you can get events and good deals, beside I can make sure I really like a sculpt stead of buying it right away. I think this is all more related to experience, and maybe age, than how much money is available. I like realistic dolls and others that looks like anime, like Pullip from groove, but I dislike Dollfie Dreams since I find their head weird.

 

I believe that our upbringing has a hand in everything that we do, but I'm not sure you can quantify that just looking at what companies a person buys from with so many other factors in play. I mean, I have theories about how my dolls reflect my awareness of internalized misogyny from my early days of "no girls" to now when my collection is 50-50 boys and girls... I'm not sure that has anything to do with how much money I or my parents make.

It sounds like you read a study that made a lot of sweeping generalizations and assumptions. I personally am technically in a lower economic class than I was when I was growing up, but it's because of my educational debt. So the argument could be made that I'm actually poorer because I'm better educated and more cultured. And let's not even get into who gets to define "cultured."

The BJD hobby is interesting because I've noticed that a lot of us who look "rich" by the standard of how many dolls we have (and how expensive they are) really aren't. We're just the ones who budget them out and save over time. (In my case I've had eight years in the hobby to amass dolls so I have a lot of them and several are quite pricey. It doesn't mean I'm an heiress.)

 

This is a great point. How many dolls a person has, how expensive they are, or even how quickly the dolls are acquired are really not good measurements of the owner's economic status.

A, B, and C can have the same BJD budget of $10 per year. But BJDs are A's only hobby and 100% of the disposable income goes toward it. B has 10 hobbies and only 10% of the disposable income goes to BJDs. And C has made investments and other financial commitments so only 1% of the disposable income goes to BJDs. Even this way oversimplified example could demonstrate that a person's financial state is not necessarily reflected in the dolls they have chosen to acquire.

 

I'd love to help but I haven't been in the hobby long enough ... will you share the results of your study here? I'm really curious.

 

I think that many people here have addressed very good points. But "taste" is subjective, isn't it? What quantifies it? Cost? Exclusivity? What "experts" say is so? I prefer oranges over kiwi. I would say that kiwi isn't to my taste. But that doesn't make it bad taste.

"Cultured" can be subjective, too. I've met people that never got a chance to go to college sound every bit as cultured as an Ivy-Leaguer due to personal study. You don't have to be born with a silver spoon in your mouth to understand culture. You just have to be interested enough to study it and learn it. Wines, literature, art, fashion, anything you can think of as "high class" can be learned.

My mother is fond of saying, "raise your eyes." As a kid I didn't get it, but now I understand that she meant look at and study what is considered the best to be able to identify quality when you see it. It's like Yukamina said, the more you look at all a field has to offer, the more you can identify what is quality in that field. Perhaps someone that has always been surrounded by what is considered the best won't have to do as much study, but a bit of effort can close that gap very quickly.

As Etoile pointed out, the international factor alone can be a major problem. People in Thailand are going to have different tastes than people in Japan, Brazil or Norway. Actually, Etoile has several good points. One other factor I almost hate to mention is how verifiable is your statistics? Unfortunately, some people seem to find it easy to lie to strangers on the internet.

If you can address the major issues this study has the potential to be very interesting, and I wish you good luck.

 

Erm . . . yeah. That seems like an understatement, honestly. I've been sitting on my hands since I first saw this thread yesterday evening, but I can't stand it anymore. Please, please, please understand that I have my professional hat on right now, and that I'm writing in my daytime role as a university professor with graduate students of her own -- because I think that, rather than taking suggestions from us on DoA, you should run, not walk, to your own professor and get some serious scholarly advice about the way you're approaching this work.

Your characterization of Bourdieu, at least as you've presented it here, seems superficial and inaccurate; your posts sound as if you've read an excerpt from Distinction and are generalizing from that, rather than fully understanding Bourdieu's methodology, the limits of the conclusions he draws, and the complicated, nuanced arguments leading up to those conclusions.

To add to what Blakeney Green, Leokitsune, and Etoile, among others, have said: what is your theoretical model for "socioeconomic class"? It's an extraordinarily complex issue, class; how you define it will shape the results you're able to get from your research. Also, how are you accounting for the vast differences in nationality on DoA -- because (pace Marx) the intricacies of class structure and class identity vary significantly from country to country? Finally, if you're really using people's posts here as some kind of evidence, how are you handling informed consent and the other legalities of human-subjects research?

I apologize for being old, cranky, and professorial, but you sound like you're writing a freshman research paper, not a serious graduate-level research project. I hope that's just a kind of translation issue, for a forum thread that you intended to be fun rather than scholarly -- but the more you post, the more it sounds as if you don't understand some of the basic protocols and theoretical foundations of scholarly research in your field. (Maybe you're just starting graduate study?) As I said, I'd recommend that you have a long and frank conversation with your professor about your research methods (including the concepts of sample size, observer bias, and the relationship between qualitative and quantitative analysis), as well as the challenges of imposing Distinction's time-and-place-specific conclusions on a very different set of evidence. And I'd recommend that you read or reread all of Distinction, carefully, then go on to read more of Bourdieu's work. Also carefully.

 

I think more well defined geographic parameters for your sample set would improve your study- perhaps limit your sample to North America (assuming you have the most experience with North American popular culture, art, etc than say from East Asia) rather than trying to take a global sample. It can be done, but it sounds like it's beyond the scope of what you are doing here. And don't forget the old adage, "There's no accounting for taste!" Humans are very complex and such a subjective thing like what dolls one finds most beautiful is going to depend on many more factors than just socioeconomic status. Even defining socioeconomic status is tricky at best! I think your study sounds quite interesting but it needs to be cleaned & tightened up a bit for better results. Do post your findings for us though!

 

I can't help to not poke my nose into this, being that I'm on my last year of social antropology and I know how difficult it can be to get all the sources and all the information correctly to be able to expand on an hypothesis even.

Please don't forget about how culture even impacts in the definition of class to a certain point and how a lot of times class doesn't necesarily mean education. Comingfrom a country where university is a right and free to anyone who completes the previous education steps (yes, totally free), a lot of times education here doesn't relate with classes. And culture itself does shape our tastes together with our upbringing. Sometimes the idea of the self matters in many ways, relating with what one wishes that object to be to more literal ways (for example, I've learnt that I tend to be drawn to dolls with lips shaped similar to mine)
And there comes also the matter of what meaning that object has for us, because it may not be the same for everyone in the hobby.

And last there's the matter of age. I know my tastes had changed from certain dolls I first was fond of just because I grew out of a certain aestethic. Yet sometimes I may find a desire to own one of them due to them making me think of certain characters I'd like to create.

On the other hand I must admit that even if I have blue fairy dolls and DDs in my wishlist, at the time of purchasing I do turn towards more realistic sculpts within a certain aestethic that can be seen as quite uniform (they are a group of pretty melancholic and pouty ladies XP). So there is a big chance, that had I had the money to have every doll I wanted, my collection could be quite different, but itd still be related to what a sculpt does to me more than the company itself. I can live with different resin kinds if they are still giving me the same joy to look at them.

Oh, and I second the suggestion of talking about it with a professor, first because it is sounding like your investigation might be too big for what they had asked you (I've sinned of huge projects for asignments not as big, sometimes they can suggest you how to simplify things to fit the asignment) and second, when choosing an unusual niche, it is not a bad idea to have teachers warned


All of that said, I'd love to get to read your results if you would like to share them ^^

 

I don't think there's enough variation in bjds to show any clear divisions in taste/class.

How would you be making distinctions? As others have said, between Anime styles and realistic? Is there something class related to that? Maybe, but as far as I can tell, people who like anime seem to come from all kinds of backgrounds... A study to see what exactly is attractive about it and whether that correlates to any sort of social background might be interesting... but that would be about anime and not really about bjds.j

Or are you thinking that a taste for bjds in general might be linked to class? The problem there is that people here are from all over the world and some are from places where there are strong class distinctions and some are not... and those class distinctions are sorted in different ways depending on the different societies and culture... So, again, I think any study would be hopelessly complex with too many variables...

You'd probably need to narrow it down to bjd-owners from a specific country, then narrow down the class distinctions and go from there, wouldn't you? (Oh-- I see you are thinking of the US.)

Many areas of the world really don't have strong class distinctions. Here in the US, I think it's just far too fluid. You can't go by income or wealth, since that is too fluid. Someone who grows up poor can find themselves making money and be in one income level, then losing their job and dropping to the bottom. They may self-identify, but others may not.

Anyway... You'd have to really define your terms a lot more precisely to get any sort of useful information. Even in a general discussion, things need to be better defined before I could even begin to comment in any useful way about this!

The dude who is making those statements about class and taste is looking at a very small sample (France). I'd bet if such a study was done in the US it wouldn't be at all the same!!! There really is no clear habitus going on here. There are definitely pockets that exist, but things are just way too chaotic and mixed up here, I'd think. Plus... I bet the internet messing with everything. I mean, before, people were more limited to their immediate environment for their experiences and interests... but now someone can live way off in the wilderness and still stumble upon odd things that go on far, far away from wherever they may be... if they have internet access, anyway. But even things like television that is showing things from far away and about different people in different situations has been messing with any sort of class distinctions for decades.

Maybe there can be SOME things that translate from France to the US. I guess that would be interesting to look into. Not sure how bjds would fit in there, though! As you said, the big draw is often creativity and I'd think you'd need to see if that has anything to do with class and in what ways. In general, I'd say creativity is everywhere, a very human thing, no matter what class you are. How it is expressed may vary. I guess that's one of the things that would be looked into... whether choosing bjds to express creativity is linked in any way to some sort of class-based habitus... I don't quite see it, though. Dolls seem to be a fairly universal thing. And people from any group who are into dolls are a kind unto their own, I think! And if they are into dolls, they can find out about bjds on the internet... I suppose, whether they respond to bjds specifically might be affected by some sort of habitus... I just seriously doubt that most people in the US have any sort of defining habitus outside of some very small, distinct groups of people... and even among those groups, I'm not sure how strongly affected they'd be by habitus. They'd have to be of specific personality (genetic, too) types in order to be more influenced by their environment and peers, I'd think.

Heh. Well... I'm a very independent type. I don't like to think habitus of any kind affects my likes and dislikes. Education can make a difference in keeping an open mind, and in broadening experience--BUT an individual still has tastes that can be totally personal and hard to analyze.

For me... I'd say I was in the very broad US middle class somewhere... upper or lower, depending, and I've had experiences with poor, working and the rich (which I do NOT equate with upper! they just happen to have more money... although some like to think they are different! heh!). I've also bumped into actual aristocrats from time to time. None of that phases me, because I think the US is basically class-less unless someone self-identifies as some thing or another. If they don't wish to, they don't have to be in a class. I think the classes here are too fluid, as I mentioned.

Taste-- I don't see it as class-based at all. Most of us in these very niche-hobbies just aren't worried about what people around us are into! We can't be. It's not like bjds are anything that popular or acceptable in any part of society! ... same with Anime, I think. We're all a little bit of a maverick liking dolls and bjds, really. I've been into things that weren't mainstream for ages, so no big deal. I don't think having a refined, cultured or non-educated taste has anything to do with bjds. It's definitely NOT something that anyone from any cultural or social-economic background would be automatically into!!!

Buying habits-- I don't see it as connected to class, either! Seriously, I've seen all kinds of people with all kinds of buying habits! Sure, it's anecdotal, but... !!! I think there are other factors involved in buying habits. Say, hoarding tendencies? Or collecting? Or not...

 

The dolls I like range from some of the most expensive to some the most cheap. I like them regardless of my income level. Just because I am not wealthy doesn't mean I don't like the same things the wealthy do. It just means I can't afford to buy them often. My Grandma once told me that I have Caviar taste and a beer budget. I guess that's true in a way. I probably would buy the more expensive dolls I long for if I had the means, but that doesn't mean I would not buy the inexpensive dolls I do now. I honestly like them both.

I have in my life experienced what it is like to live as the wealthy live. I've worked for the wealthy and I also dated a guy who was worth millions for several years and very nearly married him. When I was with him I ate in 5 star restaurants, stayed in 5 star hotels when we traveled and we traveled "in style" as they say. I enjoyed it but it didn't change me much. What class you are born into can influence you in some ways. From what I've seen being born into a family of privilege and wealth can really make you take some things for granted. Being born into a poor one can make you envy those with more. But in both cases that's not always true.

It really depends upon the person and their attitude. Just because you like Filet Mignon doesn't mean you can't also like burgers from McDonald's. Just because you can barely afford McDonald's doesn't mean you don't want the steak. It just means you can't eat filet every day. Poor people like their luxuries too. They just can't buy them as easily. Rich people they often actually like things you'd never think someone at that income level would. I don't know maybe it's different elsewhere but my experience is that people who tend to be snobby about what they buy actually exist in all income brackets. I've known very poor people who insist upon having $200 sneakers and I've known a few very rich people who'd cheerfully buy $15 shoes from Walmart.

I have a friend who won't touch any handbag or a pair of shoes that's not made by a well known designer. She buys her bags and shoes used to be able to afford them but she will not settle for some low end copy, ever. She's a designer bag and shoe freak and if she makes 24K a year I'd be surprised. But she's always dressed to the nines and if you just looked at her clothes you'd think she was a very wealthy lady indeed. Me, I like a nice designer bag or an upscale pair of shoes and if I happen to run across something I like and can actually afford I'm thrilled. But I'm just as happy sometimes with accessories or shoes from Target or Walmart. If I like it I like it. The price tag doesn't change that. It only determines if I can afford it or not.

 

I think the main point missing from a study about doll-buying habits is the fact that we all buy dolls for different reasons. Some people are serious collectors, attracted to high end 'art' - whereas some just want a resin family to love and sew for. There is such a massive age range here too, as well as dozens of different nationalities - older people often have more disposable income than teenagers still living at home, who may have to ask parents to buy their dolls for them. You could have a very well educated teenager from a very wealthy family, who just has budget dolls because parents won't buy him/her a more expensive doll.

Plus I think you need to bear in mind that wealthy, 'cultured' people often collect art objects for the status they confer, and/or as an investment which will increase in value. This is nothing to do with 'taste' or education, so much as trying to impress friends and acquaintances, or wanting to make money grow, with as little effort as possible. So someone wealthy might invest in a rare doll for those reasons, rather than because they like the doll's aesthetic.

Also many people buy designer and luxury goods because it makes them feel better about themselves - maybe they have an underlying inferiority complex, or feel emotionally insecure, and it's not so much a question of education or culture, just a need to feel special and important, by having something expensive, especially if it conveys that message to others too.