There are so many ways to define what culture is and all of them carry the perspectives the speaker has. If I had to describe how I see culture in my own words, I would say that it is behaviors and perspectives that are shared, or at least recognized by people from the same society and that a way of understanding one’s cultural aspects is putting them side by side with ours. That does not mean a competition of The Best Culture, but simply an analysis based on comparison.
In my English II course, I had the assignment of interviewing a few Portuguese as additional language program students to talk about stereotypes, and later I presented the discoveries to the rest of the class. During the presentations of the interviews, one of the groups shared a comment made by one of the foreign students: when asked about what aspects of Brazilian culture they still found weird, this person Answered that none of them were “weird”, only different. For many people that may not seem like much, but language students know how the words you choose and the way you express yourself are deeply important in communication.
The thing about culture traits is that when you have stronger, more easily-seen traits and behaviours, plus a group of outsiders who are not aware of the power of discourse, the result is cultural gossip - stereotypes. And like all gossip, they are either completely mistaken (no, there are not monkeys walking around common places in Brazil like the movie Blame It On Rio portraits) or they lack more information (Brazilians do not often wear less clothes compared to other countries because they are necessarily more promiscuous, but because they live in a tropical country). It is true that all people have stereotypes of all kinds no matter how hard you try not to - and that is okay. It is not a problem to have ideas and beliefs, but it all boils down to how you present and produce them (like that PAL student did so beautifully).
From now on, I have decided I will not allow my stereotypes and prejudice to speak louder than real experiences, and will not go the opposite way of meeting someone/some place with eyes filled with pre-concepted ideas, but letting go of ill-informed beliefs and observe if what that person/place shows me meets the gossip I heard. And I invite you all to do the same.