The concept that I choose to discuss from chapter 12 is cultural universals. Cultural universals are a variety of "interconnected activities that are found in virtually every culture." (Trenholm P. 346) The book gives a long list of things that are found in every culture. A few of those items are age grading, athletics, bodily adornment, calendar, cleanliness, cooking, cosmology, courtship, dancing, education, ethics, etiquette, family, folklore, funeral rites, gestures, greeting, hairstyles, and hygiene. The list goes on to name more activities that the author found to be universal in many cultures. I believe in cultural universals because there are so many things that people from different cultures do that are the same. Take bodily adornment for example, in America, unfortunately, many people think that a beautiful woman is one that is thin. If a woman is not as thin as people think she should be she is considered not as desirable. On the other hand, in other cultures, such as cultures from Africa, large women are more desirable than thin women. Even though they have different idea about what a beautiful woman's body should look like they still have the same idea of bodily adornment in their minds.
I think this idea of cultural universals are important because so many people think that their culture is the right culture to be in and everyone else is wrong. If people could just see that every culture has many things in common then maybe there would be less discrimination in the world.
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Hi Commgirl105,
ReplyDeleteI found your example of body shapes as a cultural universal to be very insightful. I agree that it is unfortunate that thinness is considered desirable in our culture. It’s difficult to have respect for our own culture when the outcomes end up harming people. In a nutrition course that I took last semester, we learned some crazy statistics about how many young girls develop anorexia in the U.S., and how it is happening at younger and younger ages. Like the book mentions, one aspect of culture affects another, and girls whose body image perceptions are shaped by the culture of thinness are possibly also buying into other cultural universals like beauty practices, sex restrictions, and maybe even surgery. Hopefully the image of the ideal women in our culture will change into something that is realistic and less potentially harmful at some point!