The Golden Gazette

I am a part of the Nacirema tribe. However, I never knew of my roots until recently. After hearing about the odd traditions of “my tribe”, I was able to reflect on how odd society actually is. After reading the “Body Ritual Among the Nacirema”, I thought it would be very interesting to list out and describe the significance of some of the “rituals” in the piece.  “Much of the people’s time is devoted to economic pursuits” As a country, we are very capitalistic and financially driven. In many cases, whether we like it or not, monetary gain trumps (unintentional yet ironic pun) morality in society. When taking a step back and viewing society, we can see how most of American’s lives are spent working or in an “economic pursuit” as money runs everything in this country, and is such a large part of our society. “Every household has one or more shrines devoted to this purpose. The more powerful individuals in the society have several shrines… in fact the opulence of a ho...

The very first line of Judy Brady’s essay I Want a Wife sparked many thoughts within my mind. When Brady stated, “I belong to that classification of people known as wives”, I connected the stereotypes and ownership she satirically represented throughout the entirety of the piece with the stereotypically based classifications of people in society.  Society tends to place everyone in some type of classification based on a combination of both visual and personality based stereotypes. In the case of Brady’s essay, the social group she was put into was the “wives” category. Common stereotypes of that group that she discussed in the essay were stereotypes of submission, taking the complete role of “the housemaid”, and taking sole responsibility of whatever children the wife has. Women should not be expected or forced to take on all these traditional roles! In the essay, Judy Brady showed the unattainable nature of these stereotypes by showing how excessive they are, as well as...

The piece “ There is No Unmarked Woman ” ignited a societal reflection in my mind about how even in “the most socially advanced era”, women are still treated differently than men. Women and men can be in the exact same places in life, doing the exact same thing, producing the exact same work, and yet a man will get a higher pay, or more praise. Deborah Tannen displayed this when in her piece she stated, “we women didn’t have the freedom to be unmarked that the men sitting next to us had” (556).  Tannen shows how in everyday society, subconsciously or not, women are never going to be treated the same as men. One of the largest questions I posed after reading this piece was, why do men feel what women choose to present themselves as is for the men? In most cases, what a woman wears is for her, not anybody else. Not only in the business environment that was an example in the piece, but everywhere in society women are “marked” rather than “unmarked”. I can’t think of an instance wh...