This past week marked a first in 11 AP: our first cold-read seminar. I was put in the group that analyzed "Body Ritual Among the Nacirema" after someone proffesed that they new what the article was about. While reading the article, I felt rather uneasy- "ritual activity"? "Charms"? "Magical potions". Just reading about such an unfamiliar phenomenon made me raise eyebrows. I remember thinking to myself that the topics discussed in the piece were just weird; the medicine shrine and the oral torture that these Nacirema natives participated in. It just felt weird.

"This is some voodoo crap right here," I thought on multiple occasions when reading this piece. Then the piece ended. I felt uneasy; I didn't understand, and my inability to say something that sounded knowledgeable made that very apparent. "Normally a way that helps me understand purpose is my reaction to the piece. I just feel uneasy and this whole thing is kind of weird." That is all I could really say. It wasn't until we discussed the relationship between the "medicine men" and dentists that it started to click, and then we came to the realization that the whole thing was actually about Americans! The medicine "shrine" represents medicine cabinets, the "ritual activity" pertained to being obsessed with appearance, and the "torture" actually related to dentists.

After thinking about it, I realized that really what Horace Miner did was give me a slap in the face. He used my own reactions to what I thought were strange occurrences and ultimately used them against me. Miner played a trick, and I fell for it 100 percent. I thought these natives were weird and not once did I realize that they represented the society that I myself live in. By doing this, Miner really made me stop and think differently. Americans like to identify different cultures as exactly that- different. When we think of Africans, we think about the bands that women wear that elongate their necks. When we think of Mexicans, we associate them with sombreros and mustaches (either that or drug dealers). The main idea is that as Americans,we have become so subject to patriotism that we perceive other cultures as "weird," but we do not take into account what others may think of us.