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When Margaret Mead traveled to Samoa she was under the impression, based soley on rumor, that Polynesians were as sexually promiscuous as Sixties hippies. Because she thought their sex lives were free and uninhibited, Mead was convinced that Samoan teenagers never had to endure the anxieties and torments of Western adolescents. Her mentor, Boas, sent her to Samoa for the express purpose of confirming this view, thereby providing strong support for his radical cultural determinism. Because Mead spoke very little Samoan, she conducted most of her interviews through interpreters. Her main sources of information were two native "girls" (as Mead herself called them), Fa'apua'a Fa'amu, who spoke English, and her friend Fofoa, who did not. All three "girls" - Margaret Mead and the two Samoan women, were about the same age. Embarrassed and offended by Mead's constant questions about sex, a taboo topic in Samoa, the two young women decided to play a trick on Mead. Such pranks are common form of Samoan fun. The two girls had no idea that Mead was an anthropologist who would go home and write a book about what they told her. To them she was just a young, naive, meddlesome tourist. |
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