Putting our best foot forward

ATHENS, Greece and LIMA, Peru — Across the globe, phrases from the obnoxious — “I only date supermodels” (Rome), to the optimistic — “Going to be Great” (Athens), to the pointed — “Bite Me” (Istanbul) are found emblazoned on colorful T-shirts.

Baseball cap? Check. Patriotic T-shirt? Check. Shorts, athletic socks and white tennis shoes? Check, check and check. Sounds like the stereotypical American tourist in Europe, right?

The slovenly American tourist has become an easy target for caricature on television and in movies — a stereotype that had waxed in recent years as America’s popularity waned. Tube socks and sandals. Pajama pants and shower shoes. Offensive. Arrogant. Scary.

These fashion statements alone would constitute sufficient justification for the Ugly American stereotype.

Except they are worn almost exclusively by “people who don’t speak much English,” explains Mine Karahan, an Istanbul-based guide who has led tours on five continents. It’s not only Americans who commit flagrant fashion faux pas abroad.

Outside the new Acropolis Museum in Athens, a young boy steps out of a car wearing jean shorts and a backward baseball hat. He fidgets as his mother applies sunscreen to his face, and scolds him — in French.

While conventional wisdom on both sides of the Atlantic holds that Americans abroad stick out like sore thumbs among well-dressed, sophisticated Europeans, a search for the Ugly American reveals we are not as ugly as we — or they — think.

Next to the Parthenon, a woman wears a T-shirt bearing the words “Boston” and “Arlington,” a Boston suburb of 40,000. Given Arlington’s obscurity outside of eastern Massachusetts, the shirt seems like a dead giveaway of an American tourist.

“No, no, Italiano,” explains the woman’s husband.

Back inside the Acropolis Museum’s gift shop, the cashier Christine is hard pressed to name a fashion faux pas that can be attributed to Americans alone.

They put on their shorts around April or May, she says, months before Athenians feel the need to.

But who is to blame for the much-maligned combination of sandals and socks?

“Germans,” says Christine, although Americans appear to have stepped comfortably into that mode.

To be fair, Americans have held the title for dressing and behaving badly home and abroad for some time, reaching a crescendo during the Bush administration. In 2006, the non-profit Business for Diplomatic Action (BDA) published its World Citizens Guide: one version for business travelers, another for students abroad, gently instructing Americans how to dress and behave off native soil.

Feeling that the U.S. was alienating the world in so many ways at that time, BDA tried to mitigate the political damage through manners.

"Americans are fundamentally a casual people," says the BDA in a booklet for students abroad in a stroke of understatement. "Jeans, T-shirts and sneakers work for many of us much of the time, but there are people in other countries that believe such casualness is a sign of
disrespect to them and their beliefs.

"Check out what is expected and bring scarves, headwear or whatever might be required."

According to Karahan, it is only at religious sites in Turkey that tourist fashion has the potential to truly offend. But “if [American tourists] have a certain level of education, they ask before they go somewhere” to avoid dressing offensively, she says.

She rates Italians as the best-dressed tourists and Koreans as the worst with Americans falling somewhere in the middle of the pack.

Back at the Acropolis — over the ages a high holy site upon occasion — Mark from San Francisco sported a baseball cap, T-shirt and shorts. His outfit was punctuated by his long limbs, on which he wore two different colored socks and rubber shower sandals. The outfit, or uniform, seemed almost deliberately designed to evoke the stereotypical American.

Mark seemed surprised when we pointed to his fashion faux pas. As for the stereotypical American’s defiant disregard for local sensibilities: “I would probably apologize” if the outfit offended Athenians, says Mark, who declined to give his last name. “I would try to change.”

Hm. American tourists do often look out of place among Europeans and other cultures, but according to Christine, an Athenian who works at the Acropolis Museum’s gift shop, this disregard for fashion is more an attribute of tourists than of only Americans.

So would Christine wear an outfit similar to Mark’s if she were to visit the United States? “Yeah,” she says. “But not socks with sandals."

An American tourist in Lima in a T-shirt and casual jeans sums it up: “I prefer to dress more for comfort and practicality than for style.” Still, fashion has become so globalized that in major cities, it’s hard to immediately detect a tourist just by sight.

“Nowadays, lots of people dress or act strangely,” a Lima shopgirl said.

Have Americans abroad started to dress more smartly? Maybe, but it is likely that locals’ perceptions of Americans have changed as much as Americans’ actual appearances.

In Istanbul this April, President Obama said: “I know that the stereotypes of the United States are out there, and I know that many of them are informed not by direct exchange or dialogue, but by television shows and movies and misinformation.”

If George Bush had delivered the same message, the audience would have scoffed.

But as many Europeans begin to look more kindly on the United States, its new president and its foreign policy, they are likely less eager to disparage Americans among them.

"Americans are a kind and generous people," the BDA guide says. "You can help dispel the stereotype of the Ugly American; impress people with your kindness, curiosity and fair nature."

(This report comes from journalists in our Student Correspondent Corps, a GlobalPost project training the next generation of foreign correspondents while they study abroad. Ben Schreckinger of Brown University contributed from Athens, Turkey and Boston. Gracie Jin of Harvard contributed to this report from Lima, Peru. )