aestheticism vs. sensualism

or beauty vs. pleasure

I don’t do resolutions, but a goal of mine for 2025 is to spend less time feeling guilt and shame. Fuck those. Feeling bad about myself is out; indulgence and beauty and pleasure and decadence and hedonism are very much IN. It’s the roaring ‘20s, baby!!!

But what do you call that? Aestheticism? Sensualism? I’ve heard people use them interchangeably, but I didn’t really understand the difference.

The interwebs tells me that aesthete (related to the word “aesthetics,” or appearance) is about beauty, while sensualism is more about enjoying all of your senses (pleasure). The line between the two gets fuzzy because there is pleasure in enjoying and savoring beauty.

For example, seeing an ornate vintage teacup in a thrift store is an aesthetic activity; enjoying the ritual of boiling the water, carefully steeping the tea, adding a little sugar or cream, and slowly sipping the tea from said vintage teacup is a sensualist activity.

Here’s my REALLY beautiful, aesthetically pleasing (not) diagram:

(That’s a finger, nose, mouth, ear, and eye, if you couldn’t tell from my GORGEOUS drawing skillz.)

In my humble non-expert opinion, all aesthetic activities are also sensual activities, but only SOME sensual activities (oh my!) are aesthetic.

Cool cool. Glad I figured that out. Back to my regularly scheduled programming of mostly just posting quotes that I stumble on and love. <3