ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses how people know about social aesthetics, how they study it, and how they measure it. It describes several methodologies that have helped them to understand socio-personal aesthetics as a social phenomenon, and allow the development of and the testing of theories to explain the phenomenon. The methodologies include: interviews and participant observation, surveys, personal anecdotes, ethnographies, diaries, autobiographies and biographies, content analysis, archival data analysis, and visual sociology. Kathy Davis interviewed women who had had cosmetic surgery. She then refers to trajectories of suffering to discuss how women come to the conclusion that plastic surgery will serve as a remedy for their dissatisfaction with their appearance. The National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance (NAAFA) has surveyed its membership on important questions such as work experience and discovered that fat peoples work experience is far less rewarding than that of not-fat people. The chapter finally attends to visual sociology as a neglected method of examining socio-personal aesthetics issues.
