YOUPOST 2

Americans are fat, uneducated and love guns.
Americans are generous, open-minded and hard-working.

Sounds familiar? You probably heard or even assumed some of these things yourself in the past, because these statements are just a few of the most common stereotypes about the USA. A Stereotype is a generalized judgment about a group or class of people. Contrary to popular belief stereotypes are not always negative, but can also be positive and are often based on grains of truth.

Having stereotypes about other countries and people is completely normal and often not even a conscious decision. They tend to be based on personal experience, misunderstandings, stories of other people and of course the media, literature and movies. Often countries even support certain stereotypes themselves – Austrian advertisements for example often feature idyllic mountain landscapes, traditional folk music and people in dirndl and lederhosen. 

So where does a stereotype like “Americans are fat” come from? Well, for one America probably has the biggest range of fast food chains in the world. When we think of American food, McDonald’s is often the first thing that pops into our minds. Documentaries like Super Size Me¹ only reinforce the image of “fat America”. And studies also show that it’s not a completely unwarranted belief: Over years the USA has topped lists of the most obese countries in the world. They recently have been passed by Mexico, but are still number two with an obesity rate of 31.8 percent. Among adults even 69 percent fall under a category that includes overweight and obese figures.² So as we see this stereotype is not completely baseless, but this still doesn’t mean that it applies to every single American citizen.

  
My first example was a very negative one, so it’s only fair to list a more positive stereotype as well. One would be “Americans are open-minded”. As this is more of a subjective opinion and can’t be backed up by scientific statistics it’s much harder to prove it right or wrong. Still, when you type in “positive American stereotypes” in Google, you find the adjectives friendly, welcoming, kind, etc. very often among the search results. Many people comment that Americans smile a lot, you get greeted on the streets and that people are generally very happy. Another reason why this might be a stereotype of the USA is that the immigration rate is very high and that the country is very rich in cultural diversity which can be seen as open-minded. Although this is a very nice generalization, it’s still a generalization and these are usually not completely true. So even if a large amount of Americans is said to be very friendly and open-minded, it doesn’t apply to every single one of them and you might get across some rude and unkind people, too.

In conclusion most stereotypes, negative or positive, are based on some sort of truth, but they still aren’t reliable and even if they might help us to get a quick impression of a culture or a group of people, they don’t apply to individuals. So keep in mind that when you meet a person you should never judge them by a universal belief, but get to know them personally and you will see that not every generalization is true. 

¹"Super Size Me" (2004) 

²http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/09/mexico-obesity-rate-united-states_n_3568537.html