Life and Times of Sir Jeffrey the Mad • me in an anthropologist voice: But this...

me in an anthropologist voice:

But this "Corporate" culture has darker rituals. Women and men alike are virtually required to take a knife to their body as part of their grooming, removing any postpubertal hairgrowth that would be visible to their "co-workers" (a phrase meaning, "those who labor at my side"). Because of the gendering of traditional "business casual" garb, in practice men are expected to take the knife to their faces and necks, while women run the knife over the whole surface of their legs.
The symbolism of these actions mixes a reversion to a prepubescent state with an acceptance of death. As "employees" remove their body hair, they signify that they will submit to the "company" (a word meaning group, with connotations of camaraderie; paradoxically, these clans are also known as "firms" which means hard or tough) as if they were its children, while also displaying their willingness to risk fatal injury to be acceptable to the hierarchy. This denial or reversal of puberty may also denote a commitment to celibacy for the sake of the clan's hierarchy, though "employees" seem to have a strong taboo against discussing their sexual behavior with our anthropological team, perhaps because we are considered outsiders.
Now that we have discussed the significance of these obsessive bodily taboos to the "Corporate" culture, the next section of this paper will explore the traditions' possible origins, and their relation to the widespread myth that the culture takes its name from an ancient word for body.