Social stratification is based on aesthetic taste. Pierre Bourdieu claims that how one chooses to present one’s social space to the world—one’s aesthetic dispositions—depicts one’s status and distances oneself from lower groups. These dispositions are internalized at an early age and guide the young towards their appropriate social positions, towards the behaviors that are suitable for them, and an aversion towards other lifestyles. “[Taste] functions as a sort of social orientation, a ‘sense of one’s place,’ guiding the occupants of a given…social space towards the social positions adjusted to their properties, and towards the practices or goods which befit the occupants of that position.”

Class fractions teach aesthetic preferences to their young. Society incorporates “symbolic goods, especially those regarded as the attributes of excellence, […as] the ideal weapon in strategies of distinction” He emphasizes the dominance of cultural capital early on by stating that “differences in cultural capital mark the differences between the classes”.

Aesthetic dispositions are the result of social origin rather than accumulated capital. The acquisition of cultural capital depends heavily on “total, early, imperceptible learning, performed within the family from the earliest days of life”. Bourdieu hypothetically guarantees that the opinions of the young are those that they are born into, the accepted “definitions that their elders offer them”.

According to Bourdieu, tastes in food, culture and presentation are indicators of class because trends in their consumption seemingly correlate with an individual’s fit in society. Each fraction of the dominant class develops its own aesthetic criteria. Each fraction “has its own artists and philosophers, newspapers and critics, just as it has its hairdresser, interior decorator, or tailor.”

Regardless of one’s ability to act upon one’s preferences, Bourdieu specifies that “respondents are only required to express a status–induced familiarity with legitimate…culture.” Different tastes are thus seen as unnatural and rejected, resulting in “disgust provoked by horror or visceral intolerance (‘sick–making’) of the tastes of others.”

Bourdieu himself believes class distinction and preferences are “most marked in the ordinary choices of everyday existence, such as furniture, clothing, or cooking, which are particularly revealing of deep–rooted and long–standing dispositions because, lying outside the scope of the educational system, they have to be confronted, as it were, by naked taste.” Indeed, Bordieu believes that “the strongest and most indelible mark of infant learning” would probably be in the tastes of food. Bourdieu thinks that meals served on special occasions are “an interesting indicator of the mode of self–presentation adopted in ‘showing off’ a life–style.” Likes and dislikes should mirror our associated class fractions.

Children from the lower end of the social hierarchy are predicted to choose “heavy, fatty fattening foods, which are also cheap” in their dinner layouts, opting for “plentiful and good” meals as opposed to foods that are “original and exotic.” Demonstrations of the tastes of luxury (or freedom) and the tastes of necessity reveal a distinction among the social classes.

The degree to which social origin affects these preferences surpasses both educational and economic capital. Demonstrably, at equivalent levels of educational capital, social origin remains an influential factor in determining these dispositions. Social origin, more than economic capital, produces aesthetic preferences because regardless of economic capability, consumption patterns remain stable.

Even when the subordinate classes may seem to have their own particular idea of 'good taste', “[i]t must never be forgotten that the working–class 'aesthetic' is a dominated 'aesthetic' which is constantly obliged to define itself in terms of the dominant aesthetics…”