Category Archives: Initiations

Swedish Folk Costumes

Text:

Folkdräkt – Swedish Attire that depicts family history

Context:

Informant: “Folkdräkt is a dress outfit for women and Busserull shirt and trouser set for men. It represents where an individual’s family comes from, or in many cases, like my siblings and I, the garment is passed from generation to generation. My Folkdräkt is from Mora, Sweden in Dalarna County. Each Folkdräkt from each family has its own distinct patters and garment styles. They are a result of the family’s history, and their certain ties with perhaps specific flowers that can be depicted in Folkdräkt. It is not rare for Folkdräkt within the same region to look very similar, for they are often influenced by geographic elements and resources. Folkdräkt is often worn at weddings and festivals, or any event that may include Hambo. Typically children are the ones performing for adults, but the reverse can also be true.“

Analysis:

Folkdräkt is a dress attire within Sweden that can be used to trace a family’s lineage, or geographical origins. As a folk costume, it is powerful since it’s a physical tie between the individual and their extended history. Nordic countries are known for having a rich, strong sense of folk, that extends from their weaponization of folk to protect themselves since they are smaller countries. Here we can see that this concept may not only occur on the national level, but can be applied to individual families as well. Families within Sweden use Folkdräkt as a catalyst to be able to distinguish themselves from other families. This comes from a desire to be able to define your legacy from others, within a stream of millions of legacies. It is also interesting that Folkdräkt quite literally translates to folk attire, with “dräkt” meaning suit or attire, and folk being an english cognate.

Shaving Heads Before the Meet

CONTEXT:

P is a freshman at USC, and a good friend of mine. He attended a private school in New Jersey before coming to USC. He was on the swim team for 4 years.

TEXT:

P: Yeah, so the biggest swim meet was called Easterns. And we used to dominate that shit; in my time we waned off a little bit, but we still kept the rituals. And one of the many ones was that the seniors could shave the freshman’s head any way they wanted. And that’s been for like, decades, I think, for decades. But basically, my haircut was, I was bald dude. Like completely bald except I had this old man hair, like Danny DeVito hair. And so one guy had, like Avatar hair and another guy had monk hair, like it was just a ring. I have pictures of it! We got a yarmulke from this Jewish kid and put it on top of his head. So the meet was on Thursday, and they would shave heads on Sunday. And you had to go to class with the haircut Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, no hats, no hoods, or the seniors would confiscate them. So you had to walk around. And it was better when we were in groups, like we would stick together. So you would have to be with your brothers like in unity with your shitty fucking haircuts. Having everyone to look at you like, “Ugh, what the hell? What are they doing? What are they doing to these kids?” And we would also have to dye our hair. We got it like, random colors: blue, fucking orange. So you’d have this dumbass hair and it would be bright blue.

Me: You seem to look back on this fondly.

P: Oh, yeah, cuz then I got to do it. Senior year. I got pictures. The seniors, and this one junior named [X], were smart dudes, like they knew how to psychologically prepare you for what was to come. You know what I mean? And Isaac would tell me this. He was like, when you’re a senior, you’re gonna have all these freshmen coming in, you’re gonna tell them they’re gonna shave their heads, and they’re gonna be like, no fucking way. And this is what they did. They told us at first, and we’re like, this is not happening. And you plant it a little bit every other day, maybe once a week, and just be like, “Hey, your head is gonna get shaved, you ready for that? How do you feel about that?” And just little by little, it’s the foot-in-the-door phenomenon. Like, this is an actual psychological thing, the more you get them used to and the more you get them acquainted with it, and you show them — the seniors showed us pictures of when they were freshmen. And they romanticize this time of like, being a freshman and having your head shaved. And it’s a rite of passage. And the more ingrained you are on the swim team, like practice after practice, and like doing all this bullshit, like, you know, getting cookies for seniors, getting your shower taken, then you start to feel part of the team. And then after every practice, if you do well, and you go hard, you get a fist bump from the seniors. And then they became like, my fathers too. So when they started talking about shaving, it just became another thing that was gonna happen. And that was part of being on the team. And by the time it came around, by the time it came around, even the kids that were vehemently like, “I am never doing this.” They were like, “I’m doing it.” And once like more than half of the kids are shaving their heads, then you’re like, “Fuck, I don’t want to be left out.” And then when I was a senior, like, there was this one kid, Rishi who had long flowing hair. And when we told him about it, it was just like [X] told me, he was like, “Yeah, I’m not doing that. I’m just not doing that.” And I kept in mind what [X] said, I was like, “I have patience. Every day, I’m gonna drill this in this kid’s head.” And I shaved his head. I have a video. I have a video of him looking up. We shaved just the top of his head. So there’s just a curtain of hair down here. So I have a video of me shaving the top of his head. And then he looks up and he’s terrified. We laugh about it now. So yeah, it’s something. I know for sure they’re passing that shit down.

ANALYSIS:

Many traditions take the form of rites of passage — that once you do a certain thing, you have now transitioned and taken on this new identity. It’s seen with weddings, frats, and certainly sports teams. In a team with long-standing tradition like that of an old New Jersey boarding school, the tradition and rites of passage are complete. Especially with incoming freshmen, there are certainly “hazing” rituals and other kinds of things that they must do that the teammates before them did to be considered part of them. In a way, these kinds of rituals “unite” the team under more than just the fact that they swim, practice and compete together. Once this action of collective embarrassment and humiliation is completed, suddenly, you “get” to be one of them. Now they “know” what it’s like, and it’s easy to stick together and be united as a team.

Raise Your Hand and Say “I’m Stupid”

CONTEXT:

P is a freshman at USC, and a good friend of mine. He attended a private school in New Jersey before coming to USC. He was on the swim team for 4 years.

TEXT:

If you did something stupid on the swim team, it was the ritual that you had to like, if five members of the swim team raised their hand, then you had to stand up and apologize and say, “I am sorry, I am stupid. My name is so and so.” And it would always be like the freshmen, the seniors would always make the freshmen because I mean, we would fuck up a lot. So if I spilled my chocolate milk at the table, immediately all the hands went up, like 20 Hands fly up in the air. And so I stand up on the chair. And like, basically, the whole dining hall is like, “who’s this freshman who’s standing up on a chair?” And I’m like, “I’m sorry, for spilling the chocolate. I am stupid.” You needed five, but sometimes the seniors would point to random kids in the dining room to be like, Hey, can you guys raise your hands? And if they raise their hands, then you’d have to apologize and be like, “I’m sorry. I’m stupid.” And so one time I was at the dining hall. And I was so sick of having to, like every day I was apologizing for something dumb. Like they really, they really tried to make you say “I’m stupid” every day. And so one time, there was this senior. He was sitting across from me and he was like, just a titan of man. You know, he had like, all these records and shit. And so I think the dining hall was serving veal. And this guy goes, “I can’t believe we’re eating like baby deer right now.” And I was like, “Baby deer? That’s venison. Dude, this is baby cows.” And he said, “What? You’re stupid dude. That’s a baby deer.” And I was like, “No, it’s not” and all the seniors are like it’s fucking baby deer. And then I was like, “oh, I’m googling this” and I showed them and they were like, “Oh.” And I immediately put my hands up and a lot of the other freshmen raised their hands, so I got the senior to go, “I’m stupid.” And I was like “Yes! I did it!”

ANALYSIS:

This is a good example of just a ritual that happens every time there is something of note — in essence, a way to bond and almost have an inside joke within the team. The lack of involvement of other people speaks to the trend of this bond — the senior advantage over freshmen and the tendency to bully and make fun of them. Yet this is a case where it gets reversed — the tradition is not just one-sided, but it can be turned on its head, where the freshman that traditionally has to display an act of humiliation all the time gets to relish in the glory of reversing the way it normally happens. These traditions of power and power reversal are a major part of sports teams and close organizations in general, especially those emphasizing brotherhood.

Birthday Bite (Mordida)

Text: 

So in like Latin American culture in general, I’m personally Mexican, but we have this thing and you basically sing a person happy birthday on their birthday into a cake. And, it’s called mordida which means bite. So you basically like yeah its mordida, which is bite in Spanish, its m-o-r-d-i-d-a and the whole thing it’s like kinda supposed to be good luck. Yeah, you just kind of shove their face into the cake, and they’re supposed to take a bite of the cake before everyone else, but like with their face. And, the whole point should be like a little bite, but people go a little crazy sometimes. 

Context: 

Both of A’s parents are Mexican, and she grew up in Texas near the Mexican-American border in a strong Latin American community. She is currently 21 years old and attends USC.

Analysis: The word mordida, which A describes to mean a bite, is also more widely used to refer to a bribe when not in the context of the birthday tradition. It’s also traditional in Mexico to sing the song Las Mañanitas rather than happy birthday during the mordida. Luck associated with the start of a year or new beginnings at a birthday is also a theme in many cultures. Celebrating the year or new age of the birthday boy or girl sets a tone for the next 365 days. In Van Genup’s book Rites of Passage, he explains how rituals are often practical jokes and that in order to change identity (to move from one age to the next), there must be a ritual. Here it is interesting that after attending different birthday parties and their own every year the victim of the practical joke knows what is going to happen, but still allows it anyway. Participating in good humor or being able to “take the joke” is perhaps a sign of maturity. This is also an example of ritual inversion in which the ritual is the opposite of the normal rules of social engagement. Normally, shoving someone’s face into a cake would be rude, but in the Mordida it would almost be rude not to. 

The Unlucky Loteria Tab

Informant: CS ; Interviewer’s best friend

“So when you play loteria, early on you start to pick your favorite tabla.”

Interviewer asks: “why do you think that is?”

“Oohh I’m not entirely sure. Like if I like had to take a guess, I think it’s because of um… repetition. Like you form a routine on one single playing card, so you begin to associate it with like good vibes.”

Interviewer asks: “can you elaborate?”

“Yeah so, there are certain like superstitions that go with playing loteria. The main one is that if you switch your playing card after losing, you’ll never win while you play that round. It’s only until you like, form a relationship with one of the 10 playing cards that you’ll win.”

Interviewer asks: “So what’s your lucky tab?”

“It’s 3.”

Interviewer asks: “Do you believe in that superstition?”

“I do! The saying we have in Spanish is ‘te salaste’. Loosely translated, it means ‘you salted yourself’. As in like, you cursed yourself for that round. Almost like you jinxed your own winning. It like gets serious when you’re like playing with older folk and they start betting on the game, like gambling almost. And like the unspoken rules are taken really seriously.”

interviewer asks: “do you think the unspoken rules are meant to be taken seriously?”

“I do. I think that when you switch your playing card to another, you’ll start pulling cards that match the one you switched out. Almost like the game is taunting you.”

my interpretation: This superstition runs deep. I remember the elders in my family yelling at me everything I even hinted at switching my playing card. They would often say that I would jinx myself. In hindsight, I think that the idea of having to stick with the same card could be a metaphor for monogamy. In theory, you build a relationship with this card and you start almost bonding and memorizing the playing card. If you “cheat” on the playing tab/card or toss that tab out, the cards that are pulled in the next round will almost always be matching your old playing tab. Almost as if the game reminds you of how good you could’ve had it if you stayed put.