The Body Ritual Among The Nacirema Summary

The article “The Body Ritual Among the Nacirema” gave me a different perspective of how humans look at the human body. It also surprised me and to be honest, upset me a little. The people of the Nacirema culture look at the human body as ugly, dirty and something to hide, to keep to one’s self. Not only is it ugly but In the Nacireman perspective it is required to make constant changes to the body-increasing or decreasing the size of breasts, attending what we would call dentist appointments to change and alter the mouth, to cure the body. The people of this culture make appointments to meet with “medicine men” who write down ingredients required to heal a sickness and then this list is taken to an ”herbalist” whom then provides the mixture

I am not one to judge another culture, and I have seen many other cultures and their actions that people in the American culture would find taboo. However, it shocked me that people basically are killing clients and it is treated like just another day in the culture. I am referring to the rituals that take place in the temple, also known as ”latipso”. They endure extreme torture and I’m sure that the intent of the maidens and the medicine men are not to kill but they do and in our society that sort of situation would be considered murder. “Small children whose indoctrination is still incomplete have been known to resist attempts to take them to the temple because “that is where you go to die.”” (Miner, np). On the other hand, it is a different culture and if those actions are viewed as normal then so be it. The last thing that caught me off guard in the article was that pregnant women are to hide their “burden” of a child. That is something new to me, I haven’t ever seen a culture that almost shuns