Body Ritual Nicerema

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Caroline VanVleck September 6, 2012 Cultural Anthropology Body Ritual among the Nicerema Response I personally would not my sister to marry a Nacirema man. I would not want her to because of is their belief that the human body is ugly and its “debility and disease” and thinking that the only way to fix the human body is by ceremonies and rituals. To me, that just sounds strange but on the other hand it is what the Nacirema believe. The rites, escpecially the mouth-rite sounds very painful and I would not want my sister to have to go through that. The article decribes the mouth-rite as a “pathological horror and fascination”. They believe that a strong relationship exists between oral and moral characteristics. The practitioners are happy to be hurting the people. A relationship should be based on more than just the way your mouth looks. My sister would also have to bake her head in an oven for an hour and that just sounds painful. The culture seems to me, very unsanitary. Another reason why I would not want my sister to marry a Nicerema man is because I would not want her to be worried about her and her husband’s health. Bathing is only in the temple and secrecy of the household shrine. He would have to perform his natural functions with a maiden instead of her and she would be scrutinized and manipulated. As a Christian, I feel that a man preforming with a woman other than his own wife is wrong and demeaning. These ceremonies and acts may not cure a person which I feel is misleading because these people are doing the ceremonies to get better physically. My actual sister would like to have children someday and the Nacirema believe that parents bewitch their children. Mothers are the main suspects of this, because they teach their children the secret body rituals. If my sister were to be pregnant, she would have to hide the fact that she was

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