Why Some People - Like Coeds - Can't Be Themselves by mccalpin
A few weeks later, one of the girls in the previous Local Custom Tip came in to my office in Rome. She was in tears. "What's the matter, Suzanne?" I asked (not her real name).
"I can't be myself here," she replied.
After some discussion, I figured out what she meant. As one of the three girls in the previous tips, Suzanne was open, honest, and, well, "what you see is what you get". She was totally unprepared for an urban environment full of all sorts of people, including hucksters and con men and wolves (the two-legged variety).
At home (a town in Texas), she was taught to smile at strangers, be friendly and outgoing, and, in general, exhibit the same personality in public as in private.
In Italy - as is true to a greater or lesser extent in all European cities - people have two faces: the public face that may be polite, but reserved, and the private face that is unreservedly friendly.
In Texas, when a male stranger asks a woman for the time, she is likely (if from a smaller town) to smile and answer the question. If she turns away after that and minds her own business, the man should, too. But in Italy, if the woman smiles at all(!), it's considered a come-on, even if she turns away. The man keeps pestering her, because by HIS rules, she come on to him, even though by HER rules, she was simply being polite, not asserting any interest.
This is very hard to teach people, but for many Americans, the biggest culture shock is learning that the unwritten rules of how strangers interact just aren't the same - and this leads to so much misunderstanding and mistrust...