Culture

I found Horace Miner’s essay “Body Rituals among the Nacirema” to be extremely engaging. When I read the title of the essay I thought it would be an article about a foreign group of people in some remote location. Miner explains that the Nacirema live “in the territory between the Canadian Cree, the Yaqui and Tarahumare of Mexico, and the Carib and Arawak of the Antilles.” For a moment I thought I was right about my previous judgement until I really thought about this particular location; the article is about Americans. Of course! “Nacirema” is “American” backwards. It also sounds a bit like “Narcissist,” which in general, is probably a good way of describing Americans.

Throughout the essay, Miner, who is American himself, writes of the different rituals the Narcirema partake in. He explains that our most private and personal rituals take place in the “shrine,” otherwise known as the bathroom. Our “shrines” are very important to us, they allow us to clean ourselves and make ourselves socially acceptable. We advertise homes by the number of “shrines” they have. I really enjoyed his description of the medicine cabinet within our “shrine,” or as he refers to it, as the “chest.” Literally, our medicine cabinets look like a chest or box; figuratively, they are like the chest of the human body which is used to encase the heart. The chest, Miner describes, is filled with magical potions even if we don’t need them. We eventually forget what the magical potions do for us and become afraid to take them, but we don’t throw them away because we feel that they will “protect the worshiper.”

I also like Miner’s description of the mouth. He explains that it has influence over all of our social relationships. We spend time cleaning them a couple of times a day. We visit “Holy-Mouth-Men,” or dentists, whom we seek to “arrest decay and to draw friends.” He also explains this relationship, the one between the dentist and the patient, is a type of sadomasochist relationship-the dentist tortures us, yet we return.

Miner writes of one ritual that women partake in “only four times during each lunar month.” He says that this ritual is performed by men and involves “baking women’s heads in small ovens.” I’ve thought about this over and over, but I can’t for the life of me figure out what ritual he is talking about here. The reference to women’s heads in small ovens makes me think of women getting their hair done, but that ritual usually isn’t performed by men. Regardless of what it is, I don’t think I partake in it!

Miner does speak critically of American society and writes: “It is hard to understand how they have managed to exist so long under the burdens which they impose upon themselves.” This essay did make me feel anxious, vain, and guilty of such rituals, but Miner ends the essay with a quote by cultural anthropologist Malinowski that suggests that these rituals are important. These rituals, and their “magic” help us to cope with the difficulties of life and have allowed us to “advance to the higher stages of civilization.” As vain, or as unnecessary as these rituals appear to be, they are not arbitrary.