For myself I am and always have been for the most part "mainstream" in taste, clothing, lifestyle, and appearance.

I personally have no desire to get a tattoo, or dye my hair, or ride a motorcycle. And I personally have a very hard time identifying with the desire to pierce one's body.

It is important for each person to make their own choices about what they want to do, whether that is being "mainstream" or being "wild". In particular I will say that I do not appreciate somebody telling me that there is something wrong with my being mostly "mainstream", any more than you or somebody else appreciate being told that there is something wrong with you being "different".

Even though I am mostly "mainstream", I will say that it has been a process for me to become much less uptight, and much less judgmental about people who are "different", than I used to be when I was younger.

I had a very difficult dad, who was very very much "mainstream", very conforming, and very, very judgmental. I remember as a young man trying to be a "good boy" for my dad, and deviating hardly at all from certain conventions, even though many of my peers were doing so (this was in the late 60's and early 70's). And I tended to be very judgmental of those who were "different".

However I found that even though I was very much "mainstream", I was not going to escape the judgment of my dad. For instance I was not going to not ever make honest mistakes, and I was not going to never forget something. And being young I was not going to have my dad's knowledge of the world. And I was going to have problems, and things that bothered me and that I got upset about, and was not always going to be able to handle them in a fully "adult" way.

My dad often treated an honest mistake, an honest forgetting of something, or something that was not quite according to his standards as if it were a crime, or a heinous sin, or an affront to his pride. He always said he was doing this "for my own good", which he in Godlike fashion decided I needed. And he was often very poor at understanding from my point of view some sensitive issue that was causing me to be upset. In short, my dad sometimes bordered on being abusive, especially emotionally and psychologically (though I did receive my share of spankings when I was a kid).

My dad died in 1985, shortly before my 35th birthday. I came to fully realize how angry I still was at my dad about a year after he died. I came to realize that much of his behavior was actually abusive; i.e. it was not just something wrong with me that I was often angry with him and resented him and things he said and did. Just coming to this realization was an extremely important step for me.

I have been in therapy over the years to deal with my issues, both relating to my dad and otherwise. One thing I learned was to distinguish between things that people did that really were not OK or not appropriate, and really did violate me in some way, and things that my getting upset with or offended by was my problem. And I also learned a sense of how much importance to attach to things that were not OK, and to better confront things that were actually not OK and important to confront, and let go the other things.

Just by having my own sense of things as described above, I became much better at not being upset by or judgmental of other people who are "different", or not like myself.

Incidentally the Swiss writer and psychotherapist Alice Miller in her books and writings documents how abuse suffered at the hands of one's parents, particularly when one was too small and too young to remember, and which is unconscious, manifests itself in hatred for surrogate targets, such as people who are "different".

In fact here is an interesting quote by Alice Miller in an article titled The Political Consequences of Child Abuse.



Here is another very telling passage in the same article.



Actually even though I am mostly conventional as far as tastes, appearance, lifestyle, and values are concerned, I actually do have one personal taste that has long been considered out of the mainstream. Since I was an adolescent I have always had a physical, sexual attraction to body hair on women. I particularly like hairy legs on women, but also like body hair elsewhere, such as legs, underarms, etc. That was one thing I didn't tell anybody when I was an adolescent, but since college I have come to tell a number of people.

It has always bothered me that just about anything else has been acceptable in our society at some time since the 1960's, except for natural body hair on women. I was bothered in the 1970's that hairy legs and hairy underarms on women did not become common and widespread like long (head) hair on men. And now it especially boggles my mind that body piercings are more acceptable than natural body hair on women. It really bothers me that women practically *have to* go through all kinds of pain and trouble to remove any and all body hair.