Nathan Gracie Due: February 11, 2015 BODY RITUAL AMONG THE NACIREMA

In the article the Nacirema, the people are summarized as a culture obsessed with rituals regarding the human body. Their belief appeared to be that the human body is ugly and that its “natural tendency is to debility and disease.” When I first read the article I looked at this group of people as a group of very self-conscious individuals. I thought of all their daily rituals as being pointless and a waste of their time. All of the things they were doing daily seemed very unusual to me at first. After completely reading the article and not getting a full understanding of what I was reading, I went back and reread the article several times until I noticed who the article was actually referring to and the article made complete sense. About half way into the article I realized that the description of the Nacirema, was describing Americans culture from another’s countries point of view. Horace Miner used a unique technique to help us look at our own culture from the outside and realize that everything we think is normal are very strange to other countries. I realized the “rituals” and “ceremonies” performed are the exact same ones we do daily as Americans to look “beautiful”. My first reaction when I realized this was that Americans culture is very different from many places. The values and beliefs being expressed in the Nacirema culture is an obsession with rituals regarding the human body as a whole. People want to look “perfect” in the American culture and this is being instilled in us every day from the time we wake up by the rituals we do every day. The belief that we aren’t good enough is thrown at us in our everyday life. Miner’s major point in the article is that as Americans we are always judging other cultures and thinking they are very strange in what they believe. When in reality, we are just as strange as other cultures are to us. I feel that Miner wants us to realize that we should