Relay Column: Strategies to Ease the Pain of Conveying Personal "Preferences" – Finding Loopholes in the Battle of Hobbies (Kaori Takahashi)

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PROFILE

Kaori Takahashi

Assistant Professor at Rikkyo University's Center for Statistics and Information. Withdrew after completing the required coursework for the doctoral program at Waseda University's Graduate School of Letters, Arts and Sciences. Specializes in cultural sociology, sociology of the arts, and qualitative research methods.

Engages in research based on interviews and participatory observations about the lives, experiences, careers, and identities of "people involved in the arts." Despite focusing on people in the arts, she herself can't play any instruments, her drawings are poor, and she's neither particularly good at acting nor dancing.

For research achievements, please refer to the following URL:

https://researchmap.jp/k.artkhs

I Don't Want to Talk About My "Preferences"

I think I started going clothes shopping by myself around my mid-20s. In my entire life, I've probably only gone shopping with friends a handful of times.

There are a few reasons for this.

First of all, I often received clothes as hand-me-downs from my family, so my wardrobe was already saturated. Additionally, after entering university, I was involved in backstage work for plays and theatrical performances for a while, so I was fine as long as my clothes were black.

However, these are all passive reasons.

The main reason is that I was "bad at conveying my 'preferences' to others." Declaring a preference for a certain color, shape, or design felt like opening myself up to being judged on my personality or character, and that judgment terrified me.

Why do I dread expressing my "preferences" this much? It's not limited to clothes. This fear of expressing preferences extends to food menus (I was a picky eater in my teens) and travel destinations as well.

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