Within our culture every school has a swimming pool. We lived on the coast. People swam in the surf. It's a very sporty nation and at that particular time anyone who had an artistic bent was very much an outsider. So if you liked reading or ideas or playing the piano then your dad viewed you as a sissy basically.
It is quite annoying that we have to change the sound we invented just to avoid sounding like people who simply copy us but... it is flattering and of course challenging.