Stereotypes and the culture of the Dutch

Stereotypes and the culture of the Dutch The Dutch are stoned all the time, they wear wooden shoes and all Dutch are tall, have blond hair and blue eyes. At least half the population is gay, tulips are everywhere, there is lots of freedom “everything is accepted”, Wind mills, the Dutch are greedy “going Dutch”, cheese, Amsterdam is heaven and every Dutch shed keeps at least a dozen bicycles. All of these are stereotypes of the Netherlands and the Dutch culture. Some are true and some are false. Yes, they are commonly tall but not all of them. Yes, soft drugs are legalized, but no, they are not stoned all the time, in fact the usage is twice as low as in the United States. This paper is about the way the Dutch people look, work, live, and experience everyday life despite the stereotypes that the world perceives about the Netherlands.
Oxford Dictionary gives as definition to stereotype: a widely held but fixed and oversimplified image or idea of a particular type of person or thing. In this thesis, the definition of culture will be used to mean: the ideas, customs, and social behavior of a particular people or society.
The Netherlands became a country in 1581, where seven Northern provinces signed the Union of Utrecht treaty, under which they declared themselves the independent United Provinces of the Netherlands. The southern provinces, which are nowadays Belgium and Luxembourg, remained under Spanish Catholic domination. However, Spain still tried to regain control of the Northern provinces. After the Eighty Years’ War in 1648, Spain finally recognized the Netherlands’ independence. By then, the Netherlands had a ruler and not a king, named Willem van Oranje as a civilian administrator. This was unknown in that time-area and it was another important step in developing today’s Dutch political system. (Hintz 41)
The Netherlands is a country with a unitary parliamentary representative democracy under a constitutional monarchy. This means it has a citizen chosen