It is all in how you look at it

Imagine a culture where women undress yearly, lay under a sheet, and have a medicineman or sometimes woman climb under the sheet and inspect, touch, and open the female’s genitals to inspect them. The women do not seem to mind and will annually undergo this ritual once they reach puberty. The older women in this culture go to have their breasts routinely smashed by metal plates in order that the inside of their bodies can be seen, although this has not proven to be completely effective in preventing illness.

Can you name that culture?

In the past many cultures have been boiled down by the observers judgements and viewpoint in order to be ridiculed or studied as alien and sometimes used in order that one group could feel superior. One example is the story of Sarah Baartman. In speaking of the motives of making Sarah Baartman a freak exhibit in Europe in the 1700’s an author explains the behavior by saying that:

Europeans were arrogantly obsessed with their own superiority, and with proving that others, …, were inferior and oversexed.

This attitude that the observer is superior is also seen in another article written on the culture of the Nacirema. In this article the author uses words like revolting, masochistic, and sadism. These words are meant to make the reader feel like the culture is an abomination. That the people are crazy and ignorant. The writer uses an ethnocentric view to examine the culture and expose it as below the culture of the reader. The word choice and descriptions are intended to fascinate and revolt the reader, which engenders a sense of superiority not so unlike the attitude of Sarah Baartman’s exploiters. At one point in the article, the culture of Nacirema are described as having:

General dissatisfaction with breast shape is symbolized in the fact that the ideal form is virtually outside the range of human variation.

This is stated to explain the reason why the women in the culture undergo rites to make their breasts larger or smaller. Appalling, huh?!? What type of ignorant person would do such a thing?

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I am being a little ironic. I am of course describing American culture. It is amazing when we take a step back and try and look at ourselves from the view of future anthropologists what we may be seen as. Both Baartman’s contemporaries and Linton who studied the Nacirema saw their subjects as abnormalities. It is very easy to view others as atrocious when you examine them from where you live and what you believe. When you overlay culture and context onto your observations they sometimes change.

Imagine a culture where women care so much about their health that they allow doctors to examine their most intimate parts so that they can do everything in their power to stay healthy. They undergo visual and physical examination of their genitals in order to avoid a severe disease in their culture called cancer, which is best treated early. Even though a procedure called mammograms is not perfect in detecting cancer it is the most reliable method they have available and so the older women who are more at risk subject themselves to this procedure annually in order to decrease medical costs and remain healthy and preserve their own lives.

Sometimes point of view and context change everything!