Now, these boys come from a culture that does not value daily showers or deodorant, and to make it worse they would go out on their lunch hour and play soccer very hard for an hour before coming back to their desks. And they would eat a lot of curry. The effect was bad enough to knock you down. Then they would wonder why the American girls didn't like them, even though they were tall, blond, gorgeous, and had six-figure incomes. They were all nice as pie, too. But they were lonely and becoming increasingly depressed by their near-continual rejection.
I had to explain to them, lovingly, that no American woman would look at them unless they started showering EVERY day and using deodorant. They thought this was very effeminate. Clearly clean American men were not as manly as they were, since everyone knows stink is masculine!
Wouldn't you know it, one of them--the geekiest of them--found a gorgeous, angelic American girl who thought his stink was nice. (They got married after a few months together and have been happily married for fifteen years.) Their relationship immediately persuaded all the other Dutchmen that it wasn't really, really necessary to go through all that nonsense about showering in order to get a pretty American girl, so they went back to stinking.
I'll tell you, being in an elevator with a bunch of smoking, reeking Dutchmen is enough to make you pass out. I love the Dutch, and the women are dainty and smell just fine, but some of the men just do not get it.