Introduction to Aesthetic Aspiration Personality Theory (AAPT) V. 0.2
Releasing an update to AAPT(formerly AEPT) that builds off of months of utilizing the system and my evolving thoughts and terms for the system. I hope you enjoy! I've also finally made a discussion group for AAPT, you can join here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1043756753302068/ .
If you're interested in a body neutral, gender expansive framework for exploring beauty made by a queer neurodivergent person this is for you
"Personality is the supreme realization of the innate idiosyncracy of a living being. It is an act of high courage flung in the face of life, the absolute affirmation of all that constitutes the individual, the most successful adaptation to the universal conditions of existence coupled with the greatest possible freedom for self-determination." Quote from Carl Jung
As a queer, gender non-conforming, neurodivergent person I've oftentimes felt I didn't have my experiences reflected in Yin Yang based style systems despite finding them fascinating. So using my experience with personality theories and eclectic wisdom traditions I've crafted my own system that prioritizes personality and authentic preference over others’ perception of who someone is or is supposed to be. I aimed to avoid unnecessarily boxing people in. I've tried to create an accessible structure that can model complexity and supposed "contradictions" while allowing fine-tuned articulation of preference in different contexts. I avoid gender essentialism in how I am exploring these concepts as well. Gender is multifaceted and socially constructed, and I am looking for more specific atomized ways of looking at people's relationship to being and expression. AAPT mostly only relates to gender in terms of how certain kinds of relating, or power dynamics have been stereotyped as relating to certain genders.
I credit Northrup for her original application of Yin and Yang to fashion. I also owe a lot of my aesthetic awareness, and the foundations of this system to later innovators in the Yin Yang style tradition like McJimsey, Kitchener, Kibbe, and Schemmel. As much as I think it's important to have a body-neutral space for exploring personality and style, there's a lot of nuanced insights in systems that focus more of physicality too. These systems have interesting points about making particular visual impacts, different ways of relating to your body, exploring different aspects of identity, and navigating societal expectations. At the same time I'm critical of focusing on ascribing archetypes or personality traits to body shapes, or constraining expression or joy by focusing on body shape.
AAPT is focused on inner beauty first and foremost. AAPT isn't built to give tips on how to dress for your body. I may make posts with advice on how to use AAPT for style, or common associations with fashion elements. However, it isn't the foundation of the system, and AAPT isn't here to give constraints. As a personality system AAPT is an exploration of some differences in preferred ways of moving and relating to oneself in the world. As a framework it helps people articulate which ways feel more or less pleasurable, enlivening and resonant. It also serves as a framework that helps people integrate different ways of relating to themselves and others they have an antagonistic or unconscious relationship with. Despite each persons’ unique emphasis on parts of the range of who someone can be in relation to power and vulnerability, accessing the full range of sensation and regulation there is core to a sense of wholeness and flourishing.
AAPT works as a description of core long-term motivators for style. It is useful for exploring what people feel is authentic to their empowered self and resonant with their yearnings in life. While I think certain kinds of styles can be more congruent with people's internal experience, fashion is very situational and cultural as well. I encourage people to be able to experiment and play with style and expression lifelong, rather than feel they need to quickly land on an identity or consistent presentation that might be restrictive.
Aesthetic Aspirations
I've shifted from the Yin Yang of other systems' framing to alternative conceptualization because I believe they are more specific and carry less gendered cultural baggage. Instead of Essences like other systems have labeled similar phenomena, I chose to refer to them as Aspirations in my system to reflect a focus on them as active processes and ways of relating people taken on rather than an innate state. I've also used terminology for the aspirations I believe are gender expansive, inclusive, and intuitively graspable.
The Aspirations in AAPT are as follows:
Innocent: soft, cute, dependent, delicate, gentle, and guileless
Charming: interest in enticing activities, and eliciting desire and pleasure in themselves and others. Charming Aspiration can seem alluring, captivating, titillating and warmly inviting.
Visionary: inspirational, entrancing, wise, otherworldly, sagacious, mystical
Mischevious: light-hearted mischief, boisterous, fun-seeking, silly, and frisky
Hardy: tough, wants to be strong for themselves and others, focus on sturdiness, endurance, strength, asserting one’s capacities onto the environment.
Sovereign:commanding, forceful, imperious, and powerful
Formal: balanced, regimented, orderly, even, controlled, and refined
The Aspirations are based on two different lenses.
The first lens is Attunement vs Opposition as two contrasting modes of framing interactions with oneself and one's environment. Attunement Aspirations share a soft responsivity, a focus on attracting towards oneself what it deems valuable, and a strong sensitivity towards latent, delicate and idealistic matters. Opposition Aspirations share a hard edged directive focus, a focus on taking action on its environment, and an awareness of what ways it can push and make use of objects and people around it
The second lens is Scales of Agency. Those framings of scales of interaction being Personal, Relational, and Transcendental. Personal Aspirations are focused on what is located in the self and how that self is impacted in the here and now. Relational Aspirations are focused on building out, managing, and proactively shaping their environment. Trascendental Aspirations are focused on the meta-framing of encapsulating power dynamics, the context that shapes the flows of influence and prioritization within a domain.
These lenses generate the Aesthetic Aspirations as follows:
Personal + Opposition = Mischevious
Relational + Opposition = Hardy
Transcendental + Opposition = Sovereign
Personal + Attunement = Innocent
Relational + Attunement = Charming
Transcendental + Attunement = Visionary
Relational + Balance = Formal
3 Layers
There are three layers which independently have different Aspiration stackings. Aspiration stackings are the ordering of Aspirations that describe who one is. The three layers are:
Layer A: Lifestyle
In this layer what people’s sense of preferred activities is articulated, it often relates to the kind of career someone wants, as well as the purpose of the activities one likes to take on.
Layer B: Affiliation:
This is the layer of camaraderie, friendship, typical presentation, and the specialized roles or flavorings in the activities and interactions one prefers to focus on.
Layer C: Intimacy:
This layer articulates the flavoring and roles one prefers among chosen family, and lovers. It articulates any other relationships or kind of activities that defines the core of what home is to someone, or a kind of sublime renewal of oneself.
Stackings, Accentuation, and Baseline
In each of the 3 layers people first identify Accentuated and Unaccentuated Then people rank their Accentuated Aspirations in each. People can have different amounts of Accentuated Aspirations.
An example typing would be
A: Innocent, Mischievous, Hardy, Formal
B: Sovereign, Innocent, Formal, Visionary, Charming, Hardy, Mischievous
C: Charming, Mischievous, Innocent
All the seven Aspirations are fundamental to a life that is wholly lived. However, some are Accentuated in the sense there is a clear active desired intensification and identification of self with that energy. Everyone can be mischievous, everyone has innocence, it is healthy for people to be connected to all 7 Aspirations as part of their regulation. This connection to all 7 Aspirations in a healthy balanced way that enables self-regulation and wholeness is crucial and I will be referring it as the Baseline Integration of each Aspiration. In future posts I will further elaborate on what having or lacking Baseline Integration of each Aspiration looks like. However, not everyone feels these as an aspect of self they wish to accentuate as part of their creative being beyond a foundational sense.
There's an unmitigatedness to the Accentuated Aspirations. Accentuated Aspirations are a core aesthetic in the sense that they describe a kind of beauty that people feel drawn to resonantly fully embody. Not superficial beauty but the kind of beauty that feels like a shining emanation of someone's self-determination and vital self expression. When one of the Aspirations are Unaccentuated, there is a neutrality or aversion towards it as an actively maximized way of being. To be clear people can feel adverse because of trauma or shame, but from a self knowing and empowered awareness there can still be internal incongruence.
There are patterns to how different positions within a ranking manifest. The primary Aspiration of each layer establishes the overall tone that people maximize. It is the most strongly identified and expressed. The secondary Aspiration frequently combines with the primary Aspiration for a particular spin on the primary Aspiration's agenda. It is also flexibly and loosely engaged for its own sake. The tertiary Aspiration is more subdued but still obviously flavors the overall impression. In spikes of activity it will often be engaged on its own terms for variety. The quaternary Aspiration and those that follow tend to be subtle. These Aspirations have a low, deemphasized, sustained baseline, or are brought in for contrast from usual way of being. The quinary Aspiration and onward are often hard to notice but have a subtle sense of deepening a sense of wholeness of being. These descriptions apply to the number of Aspirations people have in the first place, some people may only have a few Aspirations in a layer.
For those who are interested in interpersonal compatibility, in AAPT people have an AAPT dual which they can hypothesize, explore, and type. It can be homogeneous with one's own type or heterogeneous. It can really be any type. I've seen all kinds of unique complementary pairings. Authority Chain
The Authority Chain characterizes a bidirectional flow of consent and influence, with a Foundational end and an Executive end. In a duality or otherwise interaction of two people. The Aspiration towards the Foundational end has the role of accentuating sensitivities, pluripotent potentiality, and capacity for regrowth, insurrection and rebellion. In the integrated baseline sense Aspirations on the Foundational end support the capacity for connection, renewal, creativity, and freedom, and lead by embodying these values. Foundational aspirations have a bottom-up approach in these senses. The Aspiration towards the Executive end has the role of accentuating consolidating factors, path-finding, hosting and configuring spaces towards particular ends, and utilizing power. In the integrated baseline sense Aspirations on the Executive end support the capacity for efficacy, control, and intensification and collection of power. The Executive end embodies a top-down approach. In a duality or other desired interaction of two people, the person with the aspiration closer to the Foundational end is the Foundation, and the person closer to the Executive end will be referred to as the Executive. If the two people are the same aspiration, they will be referred to as identicals. At the same time I want people to keep in mind each interaction of two aspirations have unique qualities that have unique flavoring and potentials outside of the Authority Chain. Also, people who have integrated Aspirations are whole people who have the potential for interaction beyond this bi-directional pattern, and often times the positive capacities of each end will not be actualized, or done so in a toxic way if Aspirations are baseline unintegrated. Foundational <- I-M-C-F-H-V-S -> Executive Conclusion
I want to elaborate on how AAPT overlaps with gendered phenomena and the ways it doesn't. Gender norms often keep people from fully expressing who they are in an AAPT sense. And a lot of what gendered styles or presentations are communicating can be explained using AAPT. However, AAPT does not encapsulate what gender is entirely. It does articulate aspects of self that are often assigned to gender, particularly those related to power dynamics and softness or firmness.
AAPT is an affirmation of the body-neutral beauty that is in each person that emanates out in joyful, self-determined, powerful expression. I hope that AAPT can help people reflect on parts of themselves that are often policed or suppressed by society. I believe that the right self reflection frameworks can be an empowering tool to liberate oneself from shame-based expectations and gain agency. Additionally, resonating with these kinds of foundational ways of being in the world can be a source of joy and nourishment that unfortunately many people are disconnected from.
You're beautiful just because you are~ ✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧
