Sexporting an image of American women

Did MTV pave the way for Amanda Knox's guilty verdict?
Student Correspondent Corps
By Gillian Javetski (Tufts University) and Esthephany Julieth Escobar (University of Wisconsin)</p> Student Correspondent Corps
Published: March 4, 2010 18:05 ET in Study Abroad
American student Amanda Knox has been sentenced to more than 30 years in an Italian prison. (Franco Origlia/Getty Images) Click to enlarge photo

In the movie "Love Actually," a geeky British guy bets everything on a plane ticket to the American midwest, betting that American women are beautiful, friendly and ready to have sex with the next British accent that walks through the barroom door.

He is not disappointed.

When he returns to Heathrow Airport in London, he brings the busty Denise Richards, who plants a big wet one on his friend as an introduction.

“When we think of American girls, we think of pillow fights and girls running around half-naked,” laughed Nir Meir, a 28-year-old Israeli from Tel Aviv. Young Israelis see American women just like the women seen in movies about "typical" college life, he said.

“These movies bring out the most extreme stereotypes about women, but that’s where we get our impressions," he shrugged. "I’m sure that most Americans don’t actually act like this.”

American students dance on a bar in Taiwan. (Jimmie Collins (University of Texas)/GlobalPost)
American students dance on a bar in Taiwan. (Jimmie Collins (University of Texas)/GlobalPost)

Meir doesn't sound entirely convinced, and when you're abroad, it's easy to see why. Images of young, scantily clad, hip-thrusting American girls have been exported far and wide for decades through video, movies, television and print ads.

“He really loves women like that," said American student Miro Cassetta about her 14-year-old host brother in France, an eager consumer of MTV and VH1 videos. "And he thinks that’s real. He thinks that American women are going to be like that.”

Critics of Amanda Knox, an American study-abroad student in Italy convicted of murdering her British roommate, cited her alleged American hyper-sexuality as reason to convict, despite little physical evidence tying her to the crime.

In this video, students explain in their own words the meaning of "hooking up."
By Chrissie Attura, Allen Irwin, Julie Mitarotondo and Sara Sorcher (Tufts University)

 

"A lot of French people think that America is like MTV, like 'The Hills,' 'Next' and all of that," said Meaghan M. Dill in Paris.

Although "The Hills" and "Next" are promoted as "reality TV" by their producers, media critics have pointed out that episodes are loosely scripted and characters are actors pretending to be real. In America, most viewers understand that reality TV is not ... real.

"Many French people ask me if my life is like MTV," Dill sighed. 

Stereotypes of loose, stupid American women arriving in Europe just to shop and drink are not new. In his book "Seductive Journey" published in May 2000, Harvey Levenstein describes this perception as far back as the late 19th century. Henry James' novel "Daisy Miller," about a girl whose flirtatiousness led to her early death, became a byword for American tourists in France in 1878. Even the word "flirt" became popular in France specifically to describe Americans.

Today, the picture is painted of girls gone bad, spending their time overseas wantonly without the judgmental watch of parents, professors and society. Smiling and friendliness — as American as McDonald's, another popular export — sends the wrong signals abroad. In the Middle East, American women who smile, maintain eye contact and extend a strong handshake can be seen as offensively aggressive. 

Reality and fantasy often swirl in hazy and inaccurate smoke signals across the Big Pond and beyond.

Kikko Lombardo, a popular DJ and bartender in Rome who promotes parties for international students through Facebook, described the typical stereotype in Italy as "American girls are always drunk, and they are really easy, horny and good in bed."

"Not me," he wrote in an email. "Those are stupid Italian stereotypes that Italians say. (Not me, I don't.)"

American women in Italy are "loud, drunk and easy. They come to Italy to take a semester-long vacation," said American Alyssa Johnson after the Amanda Knox verdict.

At bars and clubs where American students get to know local students outside the classroom, cultural cues can be confusing and misinterpreted.

"Americans bump and grind their private parts while freak dancing," said a student who studied in Madrid in spring 2009, "Europeans maintain some distance from each other. Their dancing is more chaste; less sexual."

Freak dancing is defined as bumping, grinding and dry humping one's body against another's, according to the website www.lovetoknow.com. "In Puerto Rico, it is known as 'perrero,' which comes from the Spanish word for dog." The word "freak" is a synonym for a four-letter word starting with F that GlobalPost declines to publish.

American women studying abroad defend their gender, saying little more than American friendliness and openness can result in odd social encounters with men. Some say being recognized as an American is enough to get accosted.

Touring the Eiffel Tower in Paris, Dill was harassed by strangers when they heard her accent.

“It was just very bizarre," she recalled. They said "you are Americans, we want to take you home.” She said she did not believe it was to meet their mothers.

Leah Weyers and Katie Schumacher, American students in Rennes, France said drunken Frenchmen proposed paying them in exchange for sex. They said they were touched inappropriately.

"I don't believe the Amanda Knox case has had any impact on the image of American women abroad," said Andrea Vogt, a freelance journalist based in Italy who covered the case.  "Aside from her role in the murder, there were also a number of cultural differences at play that led some to brand her as the stereotypical American college girl abroad — sexually uninhibited, naive and perhaps a bit culturally out of step.

"It should be noted, though, that thousands of American women go abroad each year who do not fit that mold. This case is definitely outside the norm."

Rachel Fein, who also studied abroad in Italy, said she thinks Italian men perceive American women as innocent and naive.

Italian men "think we don't understand their culture, and are more vulnerable or easy to manipulate," she said. "They also made me feel stupid for not being able to speak their language. At certain places, like restaraunts or stores, it was expected that you know Italian. If you did not, other Italians would look at you funny."

Based on student evaluations after their study abroad, students are often culturally shocked and surprised, said Eka Gabelia, assistant director of admissions for SIT Study Abroad.

"In some countries, women receive more male attention maybe then would be culturally appropriate in other cultures. Like it might be culturally appropriate for a man to follow a woman in one country whereas in the U.S. this would not be," she said. "Also our American students also smile a lot and that smile might be interpreted as more than just a friendly gesture."

Language, or lack of it, is a huge barrier, agreed Ali Kruvant, a junior at Oberlin College in Ohio who has studied abroad in France and will study abroad in Italy this January. Many students who go abroad don't know the native language at all, or as well as they think they do, while international students who come to the U.S. cannot get by without being at least conversational in English.

"If you don’t know the language and make no attempt to learn it while you’re living somewhere for months, I think that is just disrespectful," said Kruvant. Amanda Knox "was living with friends, smoking a lot, and didn’t know Italian, which proved to be a problem for her during the trial," she said. Knox was able to address her jury in Italian only after learning the language in prison.

"Orientation is very important, cultural realities are very, very, different depending on where they go," said SIT's Gabelia. "At orientation after arriving in the host country, we also go over safety, security and health information. It's important to have these orientations because some of the things they do might be interpreted differently."

The stereotype Italian men have of American women is wrong, said Charlotte Alter, a sophomore at Harvard University who studied abroad in Florence. However, "American girls come to Italy with an expectation of fun and romance, much like the movie 'The Roman Holiday.'"

In that 1953 classic, "a bored and sheltered princess escapes her guardians and falls in love ... in Rome," according to the popular movie website IMDB.

"These girls who come from — and I felt a part of this a lot — predictable, great, comfortable, conventional lives think that they are going to come to Italy and get swept up in a romantic adventure," she explained.

Some young women seek out exotic romances, she said. Some women are easily seduced by the soundtrack of accordions, flowers thrown from second-floor windows, a sexy foreign language whispered into the ear, and promises that will not be kept.

"It plays into the fact that girls think that they are living in a movie," she said. "It’s a perfect set up for guys who are trying to pick up girls!

"You think this is so romantic, but in reality, it’s totally not. It’s not a real thing. It’s just a pickup."

Meir, the Israeli,  defends the American women he's met in his country.

"Every American I’ve met has been smart, friendly, and not at all slutty," he said. "Unfortunately.”

This report comes from journalists in our Student Correspondent Corps, a GlobalPost project training the next generation of foreign correspondents while they study abroad. Students Ariana McLean (Tufts) and Louise Ward (Boston College), and recent graduate Sara Sorcher (Tufts) contributed to this article.

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Interesting statement.

Submitted by ManDay on March 6, 2010 14:31 .

Interesting statement. Interesting for me as a foreigner who, too get's a lot of his picture of US-American students from television and internet and interesting, partly because authored by three female students who themselves are US-American.
To my opinion, this is an excerpt from a story of a magnitude far beyond the problematic picture of US-Americans and US-American students in the world. A problem of American culture and its tremendous impact on the world. A culture which, contrasted to longly built cultures of sophisticated background and complex history, has evolved from scratch, so to say, over just 400 years from a bunch of immigrants from arround the world, annexing North America.
(US-)American culture -- whatever one calls that --, without a doubt, is outstanding. But whether it is in a good or a bad way, is an issue in question.
How come American culture exports like no other? Is it, because it is more actively exported by the USA than by any other country or culture? Or is it, because it's tempting and appealing to citizens of other cultures?
I think finding an answer to this question is an important step -- or at least provides a definite indication -- in the quest for finding a non-biased analysis of US-American's image and perceiption in the rest of the world.
Is it mostly Americans, who are perceived or sterotyped as naive, sexually outgoing and hedonistic? Yes, definitly. No other country has, in all these regards, a comparably sterotyped image.
Admitted, every country has her specific stereotypes. And if you investigate further, you will eventually find that most stereotypes hold a certain truth to it. Not all Russians are notorious drinkers, but Russia has a norious drinking problem (see a report on this from a few weeks ago). Not all Germans are exact, but Germans tend to be diligent in general. Not all Brazilian women dress in mini two pieces, but on Brazilian beaches you will probably see more skin than somewhere else.
Not all US-American students are as sexually outgoing and naive as depicted in movies, but if there was no truth to this image, the USA shouldn't flood the rest of the world with the message that they were.
You, US-Americans, are one people of one country. CUltural diversity aside, the average white American carries the American image on the forehead. If the USA wasn't what the USA tells the rest of the world it is, in movies, TV-shows and the internet, then there must be a flaw in your society, because these are US-American citizens creating these movies and representing US-American culture.

I think Amanda and Raffaele

Submitted by Jo Justice on March 6, 2010 21:44 .

I think Amanda and Raffaele are innocent . The case against them is incomprehensible, subjectively pictured, with gaps and inconsistencies, that only a fool would support.
AMANDA AND RAFFAELE ARE INNOCENT
TIME LINE MEREDITH'S LAST CALL HOME 8:56 pm,
The call was interrupted by Guede's attack before her mother could answer the call.
Nov. 1, 2007 pm
~06:00 Meredith ate dinner at friends home Via Bontempi

~08:30 Guede captured on the parking garage CCTV cam

~8:40 Amanda answered the door at Raffaele's flat.

~08:45 Meredith & Sophie start walking home together

~08:40 Guede busted the window and enters the apartment

~08:55 She got home, went straight to her room and placed a phone call to her mom, *8:56 pm, police testimony

*08:56 Meredith's call to mom is interrupted, GUEDE ATTACKED

~8:56 She put up one hell of a fight so Guede stabbed her soon after he attack.

* 9:10, 9:26 - 9:46 The scientific police determined Raffaele was active on his PC, watching a cartoon.

~09:30 Meredith is dead. It's a 10 minute walk to where her phones were found plus Guede did some clean up work and searched for money and drugs.

~10:00 Guede used her UK phone and the wrong area code to call her UK bank.The call connects to a cell tower that services Ponte Rio, Montelaguardia

*10:13 Her phone receives pic. message from same cell tower

Having the handle "Foxy

Submitted by david wayne osedach on March 10, 2010 10:47 .

Having the handle "Foxy Knoxy" on My Space didn't help her court case any.

I'm an American female

Submitted by Tigerlily on April 13, 2010 01:18 .

I'm an American female student and was studying abroad in Rome in Fall 2009, when the final verdict came through on Knox's trial.

My immediate reaction to this article is to defend American women, but I know that much of what is said -- that female college students go to Europe looking to party and meet men with accents -- is in fact, true. BUT, from my experience, a much more recent experience than Knox's, I can tell you that the majority of girls I met were not so feisty. True, some did hook up with Italian men, and most of us drank, but most of the people I met in Italy were there for a "worldly" experience, to learn about themselves and others; and I don't mean in a sexual way.

American women are still portrayed as easy drunks when they visit Europe, they are rarely treated as so any more. In fact, on my flight to Italy I read 'Eat, Pray, Love.' In the book, author Elizabeth Gilbert describes that when she visited Italy around age 17, men groped her and flirted intensely. But when she returned twenty or so years later, they had stopped such behavior. At first she thought she just wasn't attractive, but soon discovered that it was the men who had changed. According to Gilbert, this generation of Italian men are trying to change their reputations.

Despite all of the warnings I received, especially being a Caucasian with blond hair and blue eyes, not once in Italy did I have my butt smacked. Sure, the men called me bella, but they did that to everyone else too. In fact, I found Italian men to be pretentious and much less friendly than I expected.

Another issue I have with this article is that American women are accused of dancing sexually - Like it's a bad thing. While this may be unacceptable in Italy (which it sort of is), it is moreee than acceptable in places like Latin America and Spain. Now, I don't see Spanish or Colombian women being criticized for "dancing sexually." So why is it so unacceptable when American women do it? Maybe a case could be made that they shouldn't 'freak' in Italy because it might offend the locals, but I spent a few nights at salsa clubs and I can promise you, the Italians were definitely into grinding when they were in such an atmosphere.

I also traveled to Israel and was pleasantly surprised by how safe I felt. I traveled with three men about my age (21), so I knew I had protection if I needed it. But I never did. Israelis treated me with great respect and made my trip amazing.

I have been a feminist since I heard the word, but I like to think of myself as a relatable, practical feminist. I will admit that many women go to Italy (or other places) to relax, let loose, and have a good time. That might mean hooking up with an Italian, or it might not. But let me ask you this: Do men not travel for the same reasons? In fact, more so than women, I bet that American MEN intend on (and DO) hook up with women. Granted, the stereotype of American men is not necessarily attractive to the average young Italian woman, but I, along with most American female study abroad students, do not fit the stereotype, and American men generally don't either.

I could go on so much more about this, but homework is calling my name..!

Well, you know what my

Submitted by riss192009 on April 21, 2010 21:36 .

Well, you know what my experience is? That, regardless if they know you are an American or not, foreign men from Europe can be disrespectful and unnecessarily perverted when there are no forward gestures like smiles made.
I was around French men for one month, and most more than not were very respectful. However, many stalked me back to where I lived and got too forward, to the point where I turned around and told them all off. See, the French girls didn't do this, because they just put up with it. I dressed appropriately (not slopping or sexy--just stylishly) and did not smile. (I look very serious in public actually because I am used to getting bothered here in the States, too...since I live in an area with mostly minorities and I am white).
So, to say that American girls act like they do on MTV or VH1 and they are openly sexual, is a generalization, Just as it is a generalization to say French women don't get fat, when I have seen fat ones.
I also had another experience with a Polish guy my friend is currently dating who pressured me to have a threesome with he and my friend until it was sexual harassment. Did I do anything that would suggest I wanted to do this? No. Actually, I wasn't even talking to them much the whole night. It was his own perverted and bright idea.
I think there are a lot of loose American women, but there are a lot of loose British women, French women, eastern european women. We need to sop with the generalizations. Or, next time I encounter more disrespectful behavior I'll have to show more guys what it is to be American: Telling it like it is!

The evidence against Amanda

Submitted by Harry Rag on May 10, 2010 10:36 .

The evidence against Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito is overwhelming.

Amanda Knox’s DNA was found on:

1. On the double DNA knife and a number of independent forensic experts - Dr. Patrizia Stefanoni, Dr. Renato Biondo and Professor Francesca Torricelli - categorically stated that Meredith’s DNA was on the blade.

2. Mixed with Meredith’s blood on the ledge of the basin.

3. Mixed with Meredith’s blood on the bidet.

4. Mixed with Meredith blood on a box of Q Tip cotton swabs.

5. Mixed with Meredith’s blood in the hallway.

6. Mixed with Meredith’s blood on the floor of Filomena’s room, where the break-in was staged.

7. On Meredith’s bra according to Dr. Stefanoni AND Raffaele Sollecito’s forensic expert, Professor Vinci.

Amanda Knox’s footprints were found set in Meredith’s blood in two places in the hallway of the new wing of the cottage. One print was exiting her own room, and one print was outside Meredith’s room, facing into the room. These bloody footprints were only revealed under luminol.

A woman’s bloody shoeprint, which matched Amanda Knox’s foot size, was found on a pillow under Meredith’s body. The bloody shoeprint was incompatible with Meredith’s shoe size.

Two independent imprint experts categorically excluded the possibility that the bloody footprint on the blue bathmat could belong to Rudy Guede. Lorenzo Rinaldi stated:

“You can see clearly that this bloody footprint on the rug does not belong to Mr. Guede, but you can see that it is compatible with Sollecito.”

The other imprint expert print expert testified that the bloody footprint on the blue bathmat matched the precise characteristics of Sollecito’s foot.

An abundant amount of Raffaele Sollecito's DNA was found on Meredith's bra clasp. Sollecito must have applied considerable pressure to the clasp in order to have left so much DNA. The hooks on the clasp were damaged which confirms that Sollecito had gripped them tightly.

According to Judge Massei and Judge Cristiani, Rudy Guede's visible bloody footprints lead straight out of Meredith's room and out of the house. He didn't lock Meredith's door, remove his trainers, go into Filomena's room or the bathroom that Meredith and Knox shared.

He didn't scale the vertical wall outside Filomena's room or gain access through the window. The break-in was clearly staged. This indicates that somebody who lived at the cottage was trying to deflect attention away from themselves and give the impression that a stranger had broken in and killed Meredith.

Guede had no reason to stage the break-in and there was no physical evidence that he went into Filomena's room or the bathroom. The scientific police found a mixture of Knox's DNA and Meredith's blood on the floor in Filomena's room. They also found irrefutable proof that Knox and Sollecito had tracked Meredith's blood into the bathroom.

The murder dynamic implicates Knox and Sollecito.

Barbie Nadeau wrote the following:

"Countless forensic experts, including those who performed the autopsies on Kercher's body, have testified that more than one person killed her based on the size and location of her injuries and the fact that she didn't fight back—no hair or skin was found under her fingernails."

Judge Paolo Micheli claimed that Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito knew precise details about Meredith's murder that they could have only known if they were present when she was killed.

Amanda Knox voluntarily admitted that she involved in Meredith's murder in her handwritten note to the police on 6 November 2007. She stated on at least four separate occasions that she was at the cottage when Meredith was killed. She also claimed that Sollecito was at the cottage.

Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito both gave multiple conflicting alibis and lied repeatedly. Their lies were exposed by telephone and computer records, and by CCTV footage. Neither Knox nor Sollecito have credible alibis for the night of the murder despite three attempt each. At the trial, Sollecito refused to corroborate Knox's alibi that she was at his apartment.

Legal expert Stefano Maffei stated the following:

"There were 19 judges who looked at the evidence over the course of two years, faced with decisions on pre-trial detention, review of such detention, committal to trial, judgment on criminal responsibility. They all agreed, at all times, that the evidence was overwhelming.

The English translation of

Submitted by Harry Rag on August 15, 2010 13:28 .

The English translation of Judge Massei's sentencing report can be downloaded from here:

http://www.perugiamurderfile.org/viewtopic.php?p=53735

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