In “Body Ritual among the Nacirema” by Horace Miner, describes fictional tribal people in a highly developed economy enriched by their natural habitat that are living in the U.S. and have a particular behavior where most of their days are spent performing rituals to an extreme by while adoring them in front of a sacred shrine. Miner describes this shrine as a boxed chest that has charms and potions from the medicine man, this to be considered a doctor and the chest as the medicine cabinet in a bathroom, which without they could not live, some of the charms described in this box are; a stick device with hairs which apparently is a toothbrush and special potions given by the medicine men meaning medicine prescribed from doctors. Aside from adoring this shrine each individual goes through special rituals every often all to enhance their individual beauty. Miner mentions torturous rituals like a visit to “holy-mouth man” (the dentist) which is visited once or twice year where the work performed is described as masochistic and yet the people continue to visit despite the decay of tooth, he continues to describe a “latipso” (which is hospital without the H spelled backwards) in which these people go through certain extreme purifications in order to not die, among the doctors in the hospital are “listeners” (psychiatrist) and medicine man that insert needles into a person’s flesh (plastic surgeon) which performs face lifts and boob jobs.
I believe Miner is describing today’s