Read related: Stereotypes die hard, if ever

Back in 1993 I was convinced that there was a secret conspiracy against me. The operatives? Venezuelan teenage girls.

“You look great, but have you put on a couple pounds?” one whispered to me at a fiesta de quinceañera. “That’s a beautiful dress but, how are you going to hide your barriga in it?” another girl asked about my teenage body that couldn’t have weighed more than 110 lbs.

I really thought they hated me and that their secret mission was to rob me of all self-confidence. But then I noticed that they made similar comments to each other, and apparently it was not considered insulting or rude.

"I was convinced that there was a secret conspiracy against me"

Several years later while in grad school in Madrid, there was a new conspiracy, but this time the operatives were Spanish women criticizing my haircut.

“You really shouldn’t have bangs at your age,” one lady said to me.

I was unaware of an age cutoff for bangs, but in her opinion, 29 was too old. (Ironically about a year later, bangs became all the rage in Madrid). On another occasion, when I told a teacher I wouldn’t be able to make it to class because I was sick, rather than get-well wishes, her response was, “Well, it’s your loss.”

 Readjusting my outlook

With a bit more maturity under my belt, I considered the possibility that these comments may not be personal and I decided to stop internalizing them. I even wondered if this frankness was a sign of confianza. Maybe I was close enough that they felt they could tell me these things, like sisters. It was a compliment! Ok, that was probably a bit of a stretch, but it was my way of keeping an open mind about it.

Are American overly sensitive?

According to the director of my graduate program in Spain, who was madrileña through and through, “Americans are overly sensitive.”

One summer, when I was working as her office assistant, she asked me to write a response to an American student who had been denied a scholarship.

“I would just tell him that it was because his essay wasn’t that impressive and that his grades weren’t good enough, but I can’t tell him that,” she explained.

Being that she worked at an American university in Spain, she had to follow American protocol. And so she asked me to draft up a letter with all the tiptoeing, beating around the bush, and ambiguous yada yada yada that we Americans are apparently so good at.

The verdict

Are Americans overly sensitive? Are Hispanics less tactful? Or is it just a difference in social norms? Let’s face it, for as much as we try to avoid generalizations in our über-PC society, cultural customs vary from country to country. Travel books have entire chapters dedicated to them.

Even so, the question of tact can’t be addressed without considering the subject of conversation. For example, at Elvira Lindo‘s recent book presentation at the Instituto Cervantes in New York, she talked about how Americans speak about salaries and money much more openly than Spaniards.

Does that make Americans tactless when it comes to money? Are Spaniards and Latin Americans rude when it comes to commenting on physical appearance? Or is it all relative?

From a young age, we are taught what is rude and what is polite, but those are internal settings specific to the societies in which we were raised, and they may require some readjusting when we leave our home culture.

I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s best to not judge people of foreign customs according to our own social norms, which in all likelihood are foreign to them.

Read related: How to leave a Latino party gracefully

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