Lifestyle
is the way a person lives. This includes patterns of social
relations, consumption, entertainment, and dress. A lifestyle
typically also reflects an individual's attitudes, values
or worldview.
Having a specific "lifestyle"
implies a conscious or unconscious choice between one set
of behaviours and some other sets of behaviours.
In business, "lifestyles"
provide a means of targeting consumers as advertisers and
marketers endeavor to match consumer aspirations with products.
The term "lifestyle"
first appeared in 1939. Alvin Toffler predicted an explosion
of lifestyles as diversity increases in post-industrial societies.
Pre-modern societies did not require a term approaching sub-culture
or "lifestyle", as different ways of living were
expressed as entirely different cultures, religions, ethnicities
or by an oppressed minority racial group. As such the minority
culture was always seen as alien or other. "Lifestyles",
by comparison, are accepted or partially accepted differences
within the majority culture or group. This tolerance of differentiation
within a majority culture seems to be associated with modernity
and capitalism.
Within anarchism, lifestylism
is a belief that by changing one's own personal lifestyle,
and by retreating from class struggle, an anarchist society
can be formed.
The term "the lifestyle"
can also mean what is more commonly called swinging. Also
called the "alternative lifestyle", people in "the
lifestyle" most commonly are part of a couple; often
a married couple. They meet other like-minded couples or occasionally
singles to engage in sexual acts. People in the lifestyle
meet on various different websites, as well as in private
and public clubs.
Some people do not consider
the term "lifestyle" to be an accepted "word".
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