Body Ritual Among the Nacerima

The "Body Ritual Among the Nacerima" was an interesting story our class had looked into. The Nacerima ritual to most would be considered strange and unreasonable. But, to these people, the rituals are real and part of their daily lives. It was normal for the Nacerima to keep charms and magic potions in a chest in the wall. Strange or just their way of life. They would also dig holes in their teeth to keep themselves looking beatiful. The Nacerima also have ritual rooms in their house that would show the wealth of the family. These rooms would be used to make the Nacerima beautiful, because the Nacerima believe that they are ugly so it would be normal for them to spend alot of time in the ritual rooms. How strange that these people would do such things to themselves and think the way they do about themselves. We have our culture they have theirs, but something about this story seems familiar. These ritual almost sound like bathrooms and the chest in the wall sounds like a medicine cabinet. How interesting that this is so very close to the American culture. This is the perspective of someone who is new to our culture. The Nacerima are just American. How easy it is to place our judgement on another culture with differences yet say that ours is not so crazy itself. The culture that someone has come from will make all the difference in the things they do and the way that they will look at things. But to place judgement, one must understand why they are so different.