Spotlight on Students: Cultural Relativism vs. Ethnocentrism

This post highlights the work required of my SA 202: Introduction to Anthropology students. Students were given the opportunity to explore a different culture through two lenses, cultural relativism and ethnocentrism, and through this exercise learn about themselves and the other culture. Several students were given the opportunity to have their exemplary work featured on the blog, and the students who provided permission have their work featured here in this and the following blog posts. Please show your appreciation for their work through the comments.

Ashton Kutcher (left) and Mila Kunis were embroiled in a bathing controversy after their podcast interview (Source: Vulpa, 2021)

By: Jazzlyn Pettis

            Culture influences everyday life in many ways, such as hygiene practices, health, personal routines, and family. Due to culture influencing people in different ways, many times people will think the way one person does something is weird, even if it is normal to the person. The bathing situation in the Kutcher-Kunis family provides an example of how someone lives can be viewed with cultural relativism or ethnocentrism. In this paper the different opinions of celebrities regarding the Kunis-Kutcher bathing practices will be discussed to determine whether they were culturally relativistic or ethnocentric.

 In the Kutcher-Kunis household showering is not looked at how many Americans believe it should be. Mila Kunis said in her interview with Dax Shepherd on his podcast “Armchair Expert,” “I don’t wash my body with soap every day. But I wash pits and tits and holes and soles,” with her husband Ashton Kutcher agreeing and saying that he focuses on his “armpits and crotch,” but “nothing else” (Perry). Milas’s approach to bathing comes from her childhood; as a child in the 1980s growing up in a Soviet controlled Ukrainian city, Chernivtsi, she did not have access to hot water so she “didn’t shower very much anyway” (Perry). Mila and Ashton then go onto say that unless their children stink, or visibly can see dirt on them, then they will have them bathe “Otherwise, there’s no point” (Perry).

            There has been many opinions on how the Kunis-Kutcher family approach bathing. Thom McDade, PhD, associate professor and director of Laboratory for Human Biology Research at Northwestern University, says that children benefit from not showering as much, since the body will encounter more germs allowing the body to be able to fight off illnesses better by strengthening the immune system (Perry). While this outlook is more understanding, many others were not as understanding. Rapper Cardi B took to X to say, “Wassup with people saying they don’t shower? It’s giving itchy”, along with former reality television star Bethany Frankel who also put her opinion in asking, “Is it ok if I admit that my daughter bathing daily is a firm rule in my house?” then furthering her question with, “Bathing is cleansing, relaxing & helps with sleep. I have instilled in her a good hygiene routine since birth. Am I canceled for this radical approach?” (Vulpo). The root of this difference in opinions stems from cultural relativism and ethnocentrism.

            Ethnocentrism is “assuming our way of doing things is correct, while simply dismissing other people’s assumptions as wrong or ignorant” (Welsch et al. 11). Many people have an ethnocentric outlook on things they may not understand because it is not what they are accustomed to. Cultural relativism, on the other hand, is “the moral and intellectual principle that one should seek to understand cultures on their own terms and withhold judgment about seemingly strange or exotic beliefs and practices” (Welsch et al. 11). A culturally relativistic approach pushes people to look at things from a different light instead of just judging based on what they do.

            The opinions of Cardi B and Bethany Frankel were both ethnocentric, but common of many Americans, as it is customary in America for people to bathe regularly because it is what has been taught to them. It is in neither of their natures to not shower daily, so when faced with the Kunis-Kutcher outlook of bathing they had closed minds. The statement made by these women, along with many creators on TikTok, did not consider the reasoning behind the Kunis-Kutcher family not showering daily (Perry). Instead, these people were basing their comments and opinions on what their culture says is acceptable, which is ethnocentrism at its core.

            A culturally relativistic outlook on the Kunis-Kutcher shower routine can be based in the scientific aspect of it. While it is not something that many Americans do, not bathing yourself or your children daily can have benefits. As Thom McDade stated, “…the young immune system is strengthened by exposure to everyday germs so that it can learn, adapt, and regulate itself” (Perry). Another culturally relativistic outlook on this would consider that Kunis grew up without hot water, which caused her to not shower often as a child, a practice she then carried into her adulthood. She states in the interview that she washed her “pits and tits and holes and soles” (Perry). It is not like she is not showering at all, but she has a different view on when showering needs to take place.

            Many people think differently about this topic because of how they were raised, and it does not make one opinion more right than the other. My opinion on the matter is culturally relativistic. I think as long as people cannot smell others from far away and they are not visibly dirty then showering every day is not necessary. I personally do not shower every day unless I was very sweaty that day or if I went to work. With that being said, I do wash my face daily, and I follow what Mila Kunis said. I make sure that my feminine areas and my armpits do not stink, as for my feet I like to wipe them off with baby wipes after taking my shoes off because they are always very sweaty.

            At the end of the day, people are going to have their own opinions on everything. Some of the opinions will consider the other people and their lifestyles, and other opinions will only be based on what an individual knows and does. As long as everyone keeps their opinions respectful, then it should not matter if they think differently because people will continue to do what they have learned to do.

 

Works Cited

Perry, Tod. Ashton Kutcher and Mila Kunis admit they rarely bathe their kids, or themselves. Upworthy, December 10, 2025, www.upworthy.com/ashton-mila-bathing-their-kids-ex1/

Vulpa, Mike. The Bathing Debate: Where Hollywood Stands After Ashton Kutcher and Mila Kunis' Confession. ENews. August 9, 2021, https://www.eonline.com/news/1297642/the-bathing-debate-where-hollywood-stands-after-ashton-kutcher-and-mila-kunis-confession

Welsch, Robert L., et al. Anthropology: Asking Questions About Human Origins, Diversity, and Culture. Oxford University Press, 2024. Kortext. Accessed 31 August 2026.

 

How to Slay a Vampire: The Archaeology of Identifying Restless Undead Burials

 

Figure 1: The "vampire" of Venice.  A brick was left in the mouth of the deceased.

 

Human populations around the world have been concerned with various types of monsters, blaming them for various misfortunes and ills that the living suffered with.  There are various reasons for why mythical and fictional monsters and entities were blamed: a lack of understanding of the natural world, a desire to avoid personal accountability, a means of dealing with grief, among others.  This patterns of behavior are most notably observed among European populations, who have a vast written record that can be consulted alongside the extensive archaeological evidence.  Today’s blog post will discuss how archaeologists can view and interpret specific pieces of mortuary evidence to identify the killing of the dead and the belief in reanimated corpses, which today are  known as vampires.

 

It was around AD 1000 that Europeans began to not only believe but act upon the belief that the dead (humans) could and would reanimate (return from the dead) to cause harm among the living.  This harm specifically took the form of spreading disease, primarily among living family members and close friends.  Europeans believed the dead were seeking out these individuals for comfort and to continue their lives as they had prior to death, and the spread of disease among them was so the deceased would have companionship in death.  It is more likely that these individuals spent a lot of time with the deceased before they died, and if the deceased died from a communicable disease then it is likely that the disease spread but went unnoticed due to symptoms not yet manifesting.

 

It was this trend, wherein someone died and several other family members and close friends became gravely ill and/or died, that led community members to suspect a vampire was loose.  Additional events, such as crop failures, dead livestock, or community wide misfortune, could also either reinforce this assumption or cause a vampire investigation on its own.  Immediately, it started with a suspected deceased individual being identified as the suspected vampire and their body exhumed.  If the deceased exhibited minimal decomposition or evidence of natural decomposition (e.g., rosy face, black and blue complexion, blood oozing out of their body, a plump and bloated body, recession of skin that leads to an appearance of growing hair, teeth, and nails, etc.) they would be declared a vampire and dispatched or destroyed as it was believed that would stop the unfortunate events.

 

This is where archaeologists can identify a potential vampiric burial based on the material cultural evidence that would be left behind during the “killing” of the deceased individual.  These could include evidence of a stake or object used to stake the deceased into their grave to prevent them from rising.  Alternatively, nails, pins, or thorns near or on the feet could demonstrate an attempt to prevent the dead from walking or running out of their grave.  Items, including coins, piece of pottery, brick or large stone, or wad of cotton, in or near the mouth were believed to inhibit the dead from literally consuming the living, stopping them from exiting their burial place (Figure 1).  It was common in certain areas of Europe to simply leave a sickle or knife on a body as it was believed that alone would cause bodily harm to the rising dead, disabling their ability to exit their burial.  Sometimes the living would leave bread and wine, representations of the body and blood of Christ, with the deceased as a means of providing holy sustenance to the deceased and satisfying their hunger, negating the need for them to leave their grave. 

 

When physical, material cultural evidence is missing (due to poor preservation conditions or the employment of different means of destroying the dead) there are other ways to identify a potential killing of the undead.  These include decapitation and placement of the head on the torso, legs, or feet.  Sometimes the hands and feet would be removed as a means of stopping the deceased from leaving their grade, or the heart would be removed since the heart was viewed as the lifeforce of the living and the dead.  Unfortunately, these acts can be the result of other actions, such as executions, murders, punishment for crimes (e.g., removal of the hands was a common punishment for thieves).  In cases where a body is fully skeletonized it may be difficult to determine if a heart was removed unless specific evidence is present.

 

Ultimately, if and when these pieces of evidence are discovered, particularly when multiple pieces of evidence are found together, then an archaeologist can assume that perhaps the killing of the dead occurred, leading to a conclusion that the restless dead or early vampiric burial occurred.  Again, multiple lines of evidence are required to support these conclusions since alternative conclusions can be reached (see above).  The absence of these pieces of evidence also cannot negate the occurrence of such actions against certain individuals (as preservation biases can and do occur, leading to a loss of evidence).  When such pieces of evidence are present, however, it makes a strong claim that such actions did take place, leading to a greater understanding of past belief systems and traditions.

Bibliography

Barber, P. (1988). Vampires, Burial, and Death. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Barrowclough, D. (2014). Time to Slay Vampire Burials? The Archaeological and Historical Evidence for Vampires in Europe. Cambridge: Red Dagger Press.

Betsinger, T. K., & Scott, A. (2014). Governing from the Grave: Vampire Burials and Social Order in Post-medieval Poland. Cambridge Archaeological Journal, 467 - 476.

Blair, J. (2025). Killing the Dead: Vampire Epidemics from Mesopotamia to the New World. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Calmet, A. (1850). The Phantom World: The Vampires of Moravia.

McCarthy, E. (2003). Death to Vampires! The Vampire Body and the Meaning of Mutilation. In C. T. Kungl, Vampires: Myths and Metaphors for Evil (pp. 73-79). Oxford: Inter-disciplinary Press.