How Everyday Objects Reflect Identity: Spoons, Books, a Hand-Carved Wooden Frog Figurine on the Bathroom Counter... They Tell Your Story.

Your identity isn't only visible in fashion or cars. It's also visible in the smaller objects that you live with every day.

Maybe it’s just me and my focus, but I feel like we think about identity in terms of big markers—your job title, your wardrobe, where you live.... However, identity doesn’t only show up in grand gestures. We all select objects that reflect our identity in our everyday lives. Everything from the books stacked next to your bed to the coffee cup that got chipped and you still use it every morning without fail. These types of things signal who we are, like a living collage of where we’ve been and what values we choose to keep close to us.

Russell Belk is a business academic (seems kind of like an oxymoron at first?) who focuses on consumer behavior. He studies what would be considered material items through the lens of identity—gift-giving, collecting, sharing, and the meanings of possessions. In his article, “Possessions and the Extended Self,” Belk preports that possessions aren’t just decoration or utility. They are part of who we consider ourselves to be.

Photo by Arthouse Studio.

Why Objects Carry Identity

More recent research has examined how objects we choose to display or carry signal identity, not just to support ourselves but to convey who we are to others. Identity signaling includes the idea that people use material things (objects, clothes, etc.) to communicate something about themselves. This could be anything like values, affiliations, taste, and so on. Anything that builds our narrative. I should mention that signaling isn’t limited to items we use everyday— and I talked about that in a previous post.