What's an acquired taste? Something you come to like following a period when you didn't. Indeed, you can start off with an intense dislike; and then bit by bit, it grows on you. After a while, you no longer experience the urge to gag. With time, you look forward to whatever it it. Ultimately, it becomes something you choose.
I think back on mushrooms, red wine, opera, mathematics and my ex-husband - all acquired tastes. Your list will necessarily be different.
The "acquired taste" may also suggest that one does it less for intrinsic reasons and more for instrumental gain - such as the associations that accrue. In this case, you may deliberately cultivate your taste because it's important that people know this side of you.
Since babies start off in Blandsville - think breast and whale sounds - most of life's experiences await acquisition. You could say that life itself is an acquired taste. (And then you die).
"Taste" has many meanings and when it means "keenly discriminating", we're on a slippery slope. I mean, do you know anyone who would say they have bad taste? Like "a good sense of humour" (GOSH) in the personal ads, everyone thinks they have one.
Yet, the inherent subjectivity of aesthetic judgment is grounded in the expression "there's no accounting for taste". What taste does, whether acquired or instantaneous, whether pro or contra, is put on display the sides of ourselves we want others to see.
My mother will call something "an acquired taste" when she doesn't want to eat it. Which of course brings me back to me and feeling like an oyster!
Children are sometimes an 'acquired taste'........Is this little boy?
Joseph playing in his new cubby house on Monday
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