Nacirema

Isn't it funny how you don't recognize yourself until you're face-to-face with a mirror?

I read this really weird article on these people called the Nacirema for sociology class. They believe in magic and have special rituals. They believe that the body is ugly and easily diseased. They believe the mouth is sacred and clean it every day and go to a holy-mouth-man twice a year so they can have magic powders put in and on their teeth. They keep their bodily functions a secret. They pay healer men to see them and prescribe cleansing medicines which they much then pick up from the apothecary, whom they also pay. The women stick their heads in small ovens for an hour each month or more. The men scrape the hair off their faces with sharp objects. Women hide their pregnancies because sex is a taboo'd topic. And their ideal set of breasts is described as 'hypermammary'.

Weird, right? Why would people think or believe or do this stuff?

But then you take a closer look.

Nacirema = American, backwards.

We do this stuff. We brush our teeth every morning to keep our mouths clean. We pay doctors to look at us, and then we pay the pharmacy for the medicine that will make us better. We keep our bodily functions a secret (for the most part) from others. Men shave. Women get their hair dyed professionally and have to sit under the 'oven' for an hour. And if our ideal of perfect breasts wasn't so abnormally large, why is plastic surgery so common? If we didn't all think ourselves ugly, why would we cover our faces with make up, and why would we dye our hair, and why would we pay so much to have our very face structure changed with surgery?

We are those weird, image-obsessed people.