The perception of American women outside of America

We had an interesting conversation in class about the topic of how women are perceived outside of America. I had thought of this before when I watched a Bollywood film called, "Marigold" about a high maintenance movie star who travels to India to be in a movie and finds that her every need is not catered to. This was a highly hyperbolic situation and her character was over the top but it did make me think about the way I could perceived when I travel to Ghana. Some of the stereotypes we identified in class were needy, high maintenance, sexually forward, aggressive, haughty etc. As I thought about some of these things I thought about how I value some of these perceived attributes only maybe in a different form. Aggressiveness could be determination and work ethic that I value, perceived haughtiness could be my attempt to try to do things myself and be independent and not needy.

I have often picture myself in the field strong and successful, not needy or unfriendly in anyway. I have believed I am capable of forming relationships and being respectful. But my idea of respectful would be looking someone in the eyes and my idea of success would be meeting a lot of Ghanaians whom I could interview by being outgoing. But the other night the Ghanaian I interviewed taught me that PDA was looked down upon and children don't look adults in the eye. These facts make me feel that maybe being aggressively outgoing or trying to do everything myself is not the way to build rapport with the Ghanaians around me. Maybe they are, but I think I need to be a little bit more open to different ways of defining respect and independence within the Ghanaian culture.