In any experiment a human being makes to be popular, or acceptable,
or horrendously scary, the person will experiment, very much as it happens in a lab! With mice! Consider the “street” or “school” as being the lab, and the people who mill around in the “lab” are trying out different ways to achieve their special goals. So many young people, for instance, really give the cosmetics and fashions that are “trending” a try. Disastrous tries that tell the person “don’t go there..it doesn’t work well;” or successful tries that grab a lot of attention from people your mother doesn’t like. Thus we have bodies and faces clad with all manner of paint and cloth and lack of cloth or added jewelry attached to all parts of bodies that are experimental. But the rat only gets to try one outfit at once, and so goes back to the cage with “findings” that not only inform the rat, but also those who have been reacting on the street or at school, to the rat’s current experiment. Thus we retain the “right” to do and wear whatever the experiment is about, and no one gets to blame us for it.

Which group of individuals get to decide what is outre enough to be reported as illegal and offensive and subject to legal liability? Old rats? Grown up teeny boppers? Hollywood stars? Rock stars? The Religious Right? The progressive left? Which group? I’m asking.