what makes someone have good taste?
A peeking bra strap. Second-year women students zooming in and out of the classroom, rattling off the dos and don’ts of college life while scribbling their contact numbers on the board with a kind of abandon I could only dream of. A boy (who would later become my best friend) asking for my number barely an hour after we met. And boys casually discussing Pulp Fiction and V for Vendetta, films I hadn’t even heard of, let alone seen. I had moved to Delhi for undergrad.
It was 2013: the first time I saw the iconic Red Fort through the train window as we approached the city. I remember thinking how closely it resembled the pictures I’d seen in textbooks. It felt strange to come to a new city for the first time not as a tourist or a visitor, but as someone about to call it home for the next few years. Despite all the glaring cultural shocks, I wore a foolishly unwavering smile because I was about to attend the same college where Mr. Shah Rukh Khan once studied.
You know that feeling when no one actually says you’re not good enough, but you can still sense it all the time, all around you. That’s how I felt. I didn’t know the music I was supposed to listen to, the films I should’ve watched by then, or the fandoms I was expected to be part of. I hadn’t grown up reading Enid Blyton or J.K. Rowling. I didn’t even know how to dress myself ‘well enough.’
You might ask if anyone ever said any of this to my face, and I’d say no because no one did. And you might wonder: was it all in my head then? And maybe it was. Who knows? Maybe no one else cared about any of these things. But I did. When I couldn’t understand the menu at a particular restaurant, I cared. It made me acutely aware of who I was and where I had come from.
It felt like I had been yanked from a tiny fishpond and tossed into the sea, struggling to stay afloat no matter how desperately I moved my limbs. Back at school, I was on stage all the time — debating, dancing, being myself. But here I was just overwhelmed and intimidated by all the insanely talented people who led the college societies.
My pocket money never allowed me to be a part of the ‘cool’ circles, so most of the friends I ended up making were like me, and they did help me feel at home. But the ones I was attracted to or chose to date — fleetingly — were the ‘cool’ guys. They were neither kind nor comforting. But being with them or the fact that they chose to be with me made me feel like I belonged, while they took the liberty of mocking the kind of songs I danced to or the films I chuckled at. And I let them.
In 2023 — a decade after I had left the town I grew up in — a young, fresh-out-of-college colleague told me she was surprised to learn that I hadn’t grown up in a city or attended one of the big, well-known schools. The eighteen-year-old me, who had once longed for acceptance, would have been thrilled. But the twenty-eight-year-old me wasn’t quite sure how to feel. What changed, and when? At what point did I start resembling the people I once looked at with distant admiration? Did I actually become one of them? Or did I simply grow more comfortable in my own skin, and that confidence had begun to show?
I would like to believe it was the latter. It didn’t happen overnight, and I didn’t get there on my own. I was fortunate to meet people along the way who made me feel valued for who I truly was. It’s impossible to mention all of them here. But the sole reason I’m writing this essay is to talk about one of them in particular, someone who completely changed the course of my life and reshaped how I saw myself and the world. Now that I’m familiar with his ideas, they feel like common sense. But the first time I was introduced to them, it was as if someone had made me finally notice what had always been right in front of me.
I am talking about the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu and perhaps his most influential work: Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste (1979). I was introduced to him by the professors at my alma mater, to whom I am forever indebted. Had it not been for his work, I might never have realized that just because someone knows their way around art and music — goes to concerts and watches plays — they aren’t inherently better than I am. They probably just had access to art much earlier than I did. It means that their parents were privileged enough to take them to these things while mine were busy making ends meet. But knowing that their ‘taste’ was not something they were born with gave me a lot of solace.
For the longest time, I had a habit of taking a friend along whenever I went shopping for clothes. I believed my friends had an ‘eye’ for things, and I didn’t. It was also common for people to compliment each other by saying things like, “You have an eye for art” or “an eye for design.” But that phrase always stayed with me because the use of the word ‘eye’ makes it seem as though taste is something you’re born with, an innate part of you, just like your eye.
Our preferences aren’t personal or natural; they are deeply shaped by the environment we were raised in and the environment our parents and their parents were raised in. And so your table manners, or the fact that you like a certain kind of wine, or that you like spending time doing crosswords does not make you superior. It simply means that you grew up in a certain kind of home with a certain kind of family.
In The Forms of Capital (1986), Bourdieu argues that the real power of cultural capital lies in how it’s quietly passed down through early socialization and everyday family life. If, growing up, you saw your parents read at leisure, you would naturally be drawn to books from the very beginning without any deliberate effort compared to someone whose only idea of reading came from reading textbooks in school.
Reading Bourdieu’s work empowered me in ways I hadn’t imagined. It made me realize how cultural inheritance in our society is far less visible than economic inheritance, and that’s precisely why we’re quick to assume superiority or inferiority among our peers. So much of what we consider ‘taste’ — what we’re drawn to, what we understand or appreciate — is often just a reflection of where we grew up and who we grew up around.
If you’re someone who doesn’t flaunt your money, maybe you shouldn’t flaunt your ‘taste’ either. And if you don’t feel inferior because your parents aren’t leaving you a fortune, you should also not feel inferior for not understanding a film, a book, or a piece of art someone else swears by.
If you’ve made it this far, thank you. I’m genuinely grateful. This is the 21st essay in a series of 40 that I’m publishing this year, every Sunday. That means we’re halfway through — it feels big, and I’m so thankful to have you along for the ride.
I am reminded of these lines from The Great Gatsby
"Whenever you feel like criticizing any one," he told me, "just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had."
Well written. And a much needed reminder for many who are just starting out.
Though from a different generation, this piece really resonated with me.
My first brush with a “class and calibre shock” came many years ago when I was in at waiting room at IIM Bangalore ready to be summoned inside for GD, with the battle already half lost in a sea of overpowering confidence, knowledge and sophistication in a room full of suave metro bred candidates.
Your observation about how “good taste” often develops in ways we barely notice rings a bell.. There’s a subtle shift in aesthetic instincts—not just in what we choose to wear or listen to, but in what we notice.
I’ve seen it not just in myself but in my adult children—I sometimes catch myself wondering, “How did they become this person? Was I part of that evolution or merely a bystander?” Did we pass something down, or did the world override us?
One prompt this raised for me: is the cultivation of taste ultimately a search for belonging, or a search for distinction? Or are those two the same thing, just flipped based on whether you’re looking inward or outward?