The Body Ritual among the Nacirema is an article written by Horace Miner for the journal American Anthropologists in 1956. There, he writes about the culture of a North American group called the Naciremans – how they are very obsessed with perfecting their physical appearance that they perform certain private rituals everyday of their lives.
According to Miner, the people of Nacirema have a fundamental belief that the human body is ugly and weak, and so to counter this belief the people have made shrines in their homes to perform their everyday ritual of obsessively treating their vanity. These shrines are prominent in the homes of the families of Nacirema, and in their shrines is a chest or box attached to the wall containing “charms” used for their rituals. Beneath the charm-box is a font where the Naciremans would bow down and wash themselves with “holy water”, each member of the family going one after the other.
Mentioned are only some of …show more content…
Upon finding out that what Miner wrote was a satirical article of the American culture (which is actually Nacirema backwards), I re-read everything from the top again and found myself “decoding” what some terms meant – like how the “shrines” were actually bathrooms and that was why Nacirema people did their rituals there privately and the “holy-mouth-men” were dentists.
With the knowledge that this article was written in a satirical manner about modern American culture and how they are obsessed with attaining the “perfect image”, I read further into the article. It dawned on me that the author was also targeting the ridiculous system of hospitals (which in the article was spelled backwards called as “latipso”) and the subtle message that you need to be rich just that you could be properly medicated (having to give “substantial gifts” to be administered and another just to be
According to Miner, the people of Nacirema have a fundamental belief that the human body is ugly and weak, and so to counter this belief the people have made shrines in their homes to perform their everyday ritual of obsessively treating their vanity. These shrines are prominent in the homes of the families of Nacirema, and in their shrines is a chest or box attached to the wall containing “charms” used for their rituals. Beneath the charm-box is a font where the Naciremans would bow down and wash themselves with “holy water”, each member of the family going one after the other.
Mentioned are only some of …show more content…
Upon finding out that what Miner wrote was a satirical article of the American culture (which is actually Nacirema backwards), I re-read everything from the top again and found myself “decoding” what some terms meant – like how the “shrines” were actually bathrooms and that was why Nacirema people did their rituals there privately and the “holy-mouth-men” were dentists.
With the knowledge that this article was written in a satirical manner about modern American culture and how they are obsessed with attaining the “perfect image”, I read further into the article. It dawned on me that the author was also targeting the ridiculous system of hospitals (which in the article was spelled backwards called as “latipso”) and the subtle message that you need to be rich just that you could be properly medicated (having to give “substantial gifts” to be administered and another just to be