Siddharth Kumar

“You have a bad taste in music/food/pop culture/XYZ.”

Replace XYZ with any other term that the upper class and aspiring middle class use to define what they generally refer to as personality. The gist is clear.

The idea of good taste raises important questions: What does good taste actually mean? Who creates its definition, and who is excluded from it? Why is the direction of cultural validation most often determined by those with greater social, cultural, and economic capital?

Is it a checklist of attributes that every person is supposed to have, which will make them fun and interesting among friends in colleges, in office parties and in the dating world, where heteronormative parameters of having an interesting personality are bountiful?

Taste is often used to exclude or differentiate people who eat, dress, or consume culture in ways that do not align with dominant group norms. Sociologically, taste is defined by these exclusionary attributes, not just by individual choices.

Taste is not just about personal preference; it signals identity, status, and group belonging. It serves as cultural capital in navigating social hierarchies.

A person ‘A’ likes listening to Bhojpuri music, ‘B’ listens to Kumar Sanu’s songs, ‘C’ listens to Anuv Jain/Lost Stories, D listens to Coldplay/Taylor Swift/Post Malone, ‘E’ listens to unreleased versions of jazz music and curates a list of songs that fewer than 100 people have heard. Whose taste is better? The general response will be that A and B have bad taste, or that their taste is out of touch with the times. They are not up to date on the latest world trends and what is cool and what is not.

It is widely known how this ladder is ranked in most urban, English-speaking, upper-caste spaces. ‘A’ and ‘B’ are seen as unsophisticated, even embarrassing. ‘E’ is considered to have an interesting or unique taste.

To discover obscure jazz, time beyond survival is needed, as well as English-language digital fluency, access to streaming services, and social circles that reward such consumption. Reading certain books requires studying at institutions where those books are essential. Appreciating certain cuisines takes money to experiment without the anxiety of waste. Dressing in a minimalist way demands a financial buffer to make simplicity a choice, not a necessity.

In reality, what is described as taste is performative access to experiences and objects. Taste reflects accumulated privilege and class awareness, serving as a marker of individuality often linked to one’s social background.

Thus, taste essentially functions as cultural capital. As with other forms of capital, upper castes hold the power to define what qualifies as good or bad taste in India.

Since Savarna locations historically controlled power structures, education, legitimacy over English, access to classical and global art forms, they had the moral and social authority to define what counts as refined. So when certain food is called smelly, certain music loud, certain clothing gaudy, or certain speech crude, it is not an aesthetic judgment but a continuation of caste through the language of lifestyle.

Only the form of class divide has become sophisticated. From the binary of pure and impure, it has shifted to the binary of good and bad taste.

Aspiring to particular cultural forms means not just consuming them, but seeing them as normal, superior, and universal. Other forms become less classy or cringe. This distinction is less about preference and more about how socio-cultural conditioning legitimises some tastes and pathologises others.

Tastes also shape social persona, how people appear to others in shared socio-cultural spaces where interaction happens. For a member of this socio-cultural in-group, this social persona is what is colloquially referred to as personality.

In urban, upper-class spaces, having an ‘interesting personality’ generally means displaying the right cultural interests, such as consuming popular shows, reading certain literature, listening to fashionable music, eating at approved places, holding a set political view, dressing casually but stylishly, and being confidently social.

While, in strict psychological terms, personality refers to behavioural and emotional patterns that a person possesses, it has begun to be used as a form of exemplified taste.

Personality is taste made visible and socially usable. And in the age of dating apps and networking culture, personality becomes marketable taste. Spotify Wrapped, bookshelves, travel photos, film preferences, coffee choices: these are not just expressions of self. They are signals. They are used to sort people into desirable, compatible, interesting, or basic.

So personality, as it is currently understood in these spaces, is not an organic selfhood but a curated cultural resume. It tells potential partners and friends that they belong to the same world, have the same access, and share the same codes. There will be no embarrassment in shared social settings.

This is why people who are first-generation urban, first-generation English-speaking, or from non-Savarna backgrounds often experience anxiety around taste. Not because there is a lack of depth or individuality, but because they are navigating a space where legitimacy is pre-decided. They are not merely building a self but are trying to acquire recognisable cultural capital fast enough to be accepted.

However, to acknowledge that taste is shaped by caste and class is not to say all preferences are identical or that aesthetic discussions are meaningless.

It means that when someone is said to have bad taste, what is often meant is that they have not had the same access, have not internalised the same class codes, and that their cultural world is not the one currently rewarded in the social and romantic marketplace.