Things That Should Be More Socially Acceptable

Some things that I think we should make more socially acceptable: a non-comprehensive and entirely random list

1. Having tattoos and piercings. I don’t understand why it’s seen as unprofessional to have tattoos as long as they’re not horribly vulgar, and most of the time they are used as a sense of self-expression and can be used to show others what that person finds meaningful. But I hate the notion that people who have tattoos or piercings would make bad parents or bad workers, because there is literally no correlation in wanting to get some nice art or pretty jewelry on your body and your skillset as a person.
2. Adults having stuffed animals. Whoever decided that it was childish to have stuffed animals can go lie in their cold empty beds with no squishy friends to accompany them. Stuffed animals are literally just shaped pillows, so I guess the adult equivalent would be throw pillows. But most of the time throw pillows are made of that scratchy material so they look nice but no one wants to hug them when they wake up in the middle of the night, plus they often get thrown on the floor. On the other hand, stuffed animals are soft and cute and you would usually pick them out because they have personal meaning, not just because they fit your aesthetic. And I’m pretty sure you could find stuffed animal friends who fit your aesthetic too if you tried.
3. Straight men and women being entirely platonic friends. There are psychological experiments about why more women think that straight men and women can be just friends than men. The conclusion they came to is that it’s more common for women to be more affectionate and open about their feelings in their friendships with other women, while men do not commonly do that as much. So, when women are more open to their male friends, men perceive this as being especially affectionate, or connect on a platonic level which they perceive as being romantically inclined. I have had many straight guy friends, and I think it’s totally stupid that so many people believe that that’s impossible.
4. Not reading only highbrow books as you get older. The idea behind this one is similar to the stuffed animal thing, but as young adults we get many books with lots of drama and fantasy and just overall fiction. Like teen drama is a whole genre of books (and also TV shows). As we get older, we either try to classify our fictional reading material to make it more palatable, like with sci-fi nerds, or more shameful, like with “trashy romance novels”. I think that a lot more people would read for pleasure if there were more fictional books made for adults, because it feels like too much pressure to only read biographies or long, boring “novels” that often feel convoluted. I think that reading can be a great tool for education and keeping our minds sharp, but it can also be an escape from everyday life if we let it be. And yeah, theoretically we could just read those teen, drama-style fiction books, but it gets to a certain point where reading about high schoolers just gets a little sus. 

I have many more of these, some more obvious and also some more controversial, but this was just what was on my mind as I lay in my bed with 3 stuffed animals.

Holly