Nacirema Paper Essay

It has been rumored that are extraordinary beings on another familiar planet close by our home of Nacirema, and it is our goal as the Interplanetary Nacirema Research Center team to investigate the situation. We plan to focus our trip on the specific coordinates that the University of Connecticut campus lies on, and being the curious creatures we are, we plan to delve into specific areas within this concentrated area. We will be studying the way both males and females conduct their everyday lives in terms of living, learning and communicating. Through our research, we plan to lighten up the mysteries about this foreign species and enable ourselves to communicate and interact with them according to their cultural norms. We launch our research in a lively part of campus where the residents will meet with each other and eat a meal of their foreign cuisine, the Student Union. This area is always populated with all different kinds of people who conduct their meetings amongst each other in close quarters like there is nothing to hide. It is here that we made a great discovery which we believe will apply to all parts of campus; we observed a separation in habits based on gender. The males eat their food and associate with each other in rather barbaric ways, hardly breathing before taking the next bite of food. In contrast, females seem to almost nibble at their food as if they weren’t even hungry. After observing this lack of similarities between genders while eating, we are now curious to see how it applies to other settings. The earthlings of these coordinates have taken a special liking to the area surrounding the north campus quadrangle. The residents of this particular area have certain characteristics that separate them from the rest of the campus in a way that has never been observed on our home planet. Everywhere you look there is someone participating in either some sort of barbaric activity or just lying around looking like some sort of statue. It does seem, however, that there is a division in personalities based on the gender of the earthlings, much like what has been observed in other parts of the campus. The males of the community run around wearing shirts that hardly cover half of their torso and throw objects at each other as if it was some sort of fun activity. Additionally, they refuse to stop looking at the females like they are trying to impress them or something. Despite these oddities, the females are an even more foreign species and observing them just sends my mind into even more confusion. These females just gather in large groups and instead of socializing with each other and conversing about their lives, they just lie down and do absolutely nothing. It is truly a spectacle. According to my observations, it seems as if the only thing they are interested in is lying in the sun and tanning their skin. In lieu of this behavior by the females, the males just insist on prancing around trying to get their attentio n. It will definitely take more observation to understand why the earthlings of this particular location act the way they do. We decided to continue our research in the gymnasium to figure out how the humans behave in a more isolated environment of working out and conditioning. Once again there seems to be more differences than similarities between the two genders while working out. The males tend to lift weights to build muscle and work on their â€Å"beach body†. Males were constantly caught looking as themselves in the mirror and flexing just to see how good they looked. Once again it seems as if there main goal is to use all their energy impress the females no matter what they are doing. On the other hand, the females seem to go to the gym just for the purpose of running and losing weight. It appears that the females’ mindset is that it doesn’t matter how skinny they are, they still think they need to lose weight. Our studies of this strange setting yielded more important information concerning the behavior of the humans and hopefully will lead to more effective studies in the future. Based on these observations, it is evident that we are not on our own planet of Nacirema and the beings of this planet are not like us at all. However, much has been learned from our trip here about the personalities and motives of these residents. Nonetheless, I believe that based on our findings we will not be making a trip back here until we have prepared ourselves enough in the ways of their strange, strange culture.