The final unit I taught this year in my ENL/ESL class was called What We Wear. It's all about how you wear different clothes and accessories in different situations and for different reasons. And it taught about different cultures too. The textbook actually talked about Indian women wearing henna for her wedding, and we discussed the other cultures we know or are from that use henna. It talked about Maori and Chin women who have culturally significant face tattoos and what they mean and if people still get them today. So we had a conversation about tattoos in each of their cultures. It talked about jewelry based traditions of the Ndebele and Navajo and Chinese peoples.
Something that really struck me, was when the textbook mentioned that in many cultures girls get their ears pierced as babies. I asked the girls if they had their ears pierced and how old when it happened. But then I asked the boys too and several of my boys from various African countries (Togo, Congo, Malawi) said they used to have a pierced ear but they took it out. One of the boys asked me, why in Africa can boys have pierced ears but in America (USA) people call you gay for it. Several other boys said yeah or otherwise indicated they had the same question and had experienced the same harassment. These kids are just 11 or 12. Not one of those boys still wears his earring.
