By abbymarco
There’s something about completely immersing yourself in a new culture that really makes you take a step back and look at yourself- your life at home, your actions, your belief system- in an entirely new light. Living in a society so different than your own makes you acutely aware of how you appear to the rest of the world, intentionally or not.
Now that I’ve spent two months in Morocco, I feel as if I have learned more about myself and my own culture than I would have expected; I thought I was coming here to learn about a new culture (I’m doing that too, don’t worry), not my own!
I had been warned before coming to Morocco of the ever-present and unavoidable street harassment that women, specifically American women, face here, but nothing could have prepared me for exactly what form this harassment would take sometimes. During my thirty-minute walk to school, some of the comments I hear include things like:
“Easy American girl”
“Hey, Brittany Spears”
“Muslim-hater”
“Rich Americans”
While comments such as these are bothersome, they’re quite easy to ignore. What interests me more, then, about the Moroccan perception of Americans, is what the local people that I have forged relationships with share with me. These are some of the comments and questions about Americans that I have received from local Moroccan students, my host family, and even my professors:
“All Americans live in big houses with pools and personal airplanes” (what?!)
“In the US, there are no homeless people, right?
“All Americans hate Muslims”
“American females are all promiscuous. That’s what we see on TV”
“Americans do not care about religion”
“Everyone is equal in America, no matter who they are”
“You can afford to pay the entire bill for the group. You parents just pay for everything, anyways!”
…And the list goes on. At first, some of the broad, overgeneralized statements about the US surprised me, but as I reflected more upon the sources of information for the typical Moroccan, it made a little more sense. In many movies, magazines, and music videos, for example, we see scantily dressed women, huge mansions, and people who seem to have it all. If I didn’t know any better, I too, would think that every single American lives the perfect and stereotypical “American Dream.”
Many times, my Moroccan peers are shocked to hear me disprove their misconceptions about the US; they’re taken aback when I say women still earn far less than men, they’re surprised to hear that homeless people line the Americans streets, as well, and they are stunned when I tell them that over 45 million Americans live below the poverty line.
While I am only in Morocco for a short time and only have the opportunity to meet so many people, I am trying my best to make a conscious effort to share information about American life with others, just as they are sharing Moroccan life with me. We have so much to learn about one another all around the world, and it is only through a true understanding of one another’s cultures that we will be able to make the world a better place to live.