Friday, December 31, 2021

Agastopia

Agastopia (pronounced agg-uh-stow-pee-ah)

Deriving visual enjoyment from the appearance of a specific body part or parts (some suggesting the attraction must be fetishistic to cross the threshold from admiration to syndrome).

2011: A creation of etymologist Peter Novobatsky who included it in his 2011 book Depraved English.  A construct from the Ancient Greek γα- (aga(s)-) (very) + -topia (a back-formation extracted from utopia (and other words) ultimately deriving from the Ancient Greek τόπος (tópos) (place).  Utopia was from the New Latin Ūtopia, the name of a fictional island possessing a seemingly perfect socio-politico-legal system in the 1516 book Utopia by Sir Thomas More (1478–1535).  The construct was the Ancient Greek ο (ou) (not) + τόπος (tópos) (place, region) + -ία (-ía) (the New Latin suffix, from the Latin -ia and the Ancient Greek -ία (-ía) & -εια (-eia) which formed abstract nouns of feminine gender.  More’s irony in calling a world in which everything and everyone works in perfect harmony being best translated as “not a real place” is often lost by modern writers.  Agastopia is a noun, agastopic is an adjective and agastopically is an adverb; the noun plural is agastopias.

Agastopic: Lindsay Lohan's feet.

Although there had not previously been a generic descriptor of part-focused voyeuristic fetishism, there’s no suggestion Novobataky thought agastopia a serious contribution to the taxonomy of mental health but some have adopted it, fleshing out the definitional range.  It’s been suggested the condition manifests as (1) a love or admiration of one’s own body part, compelling either a fondness of performing a particular task with it or a preference to cover and shield it with a protective layer or (2) the more familiar admiration of another’s body part(s).  Some sources, without citation, note it’s “…believed to be a rare condition” and one for which there’s “… no cure.”  Despite these nudges, when published in 2013, the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), made no specific mention of agastopia.

No comments:

Post a Comment