The Politics of Smile

 I am tired of the “Can I get a smile?” and “Smile, it’s not that bad!” comments that are a too common part of thoroughbred city life. I am tired of things like the “Smile! You look tired” demand from the rickshaw driver, who recently dropped me at the airport. Delivering a grin and a chirpy “I’m fine, how are you?” seems like an unnecessary cheerful bluff, even slightly deranged. Although smiling may be a universal sign of positivity, there are cultural differences. It is well known that women are often expected to smile to make others feel more comfortable. 

This expectation also seems like a big part of American existence. The wide American smile is a relatively recent development. Americans smile far more than people do in other home countries. Does America’s emphasis on smiling say something about a desire for happy endings, for appeasement and artifice? Or do they smile more as a way to cope with troubles or as a source of comfort? Maybe it’s Americans’ access to orthodontics & cosmetic dentistry that a “Hollywood smile” of bleached and blinding-white teeth has become a defacto standard. This makes the American smiles more assertive, reflecting Americans’ rating of themselves as more dominant. 

The more corrupt a society is, the more its citizens see smiling as suspicious. A 2015 study concluded that people in countries having a long history of immigration do smile more than those in other countries as smiling is a form of nonverbal communication between those who don’t share a language.

Smiling when you don’t feel like it has been proven to make you feel good by producing actual feelings of happiness. I have tried it and it does work, but I don’t want to be ordered to smile because if a smile is the appearance of happiness, then to be commanded to smile takes away my right to my own feelings forcing me to appear happy, even if I am not. 

My smiling boycott did feel a little risky as there may be something about my neutral expression that comes across as seeming worried or displeased. People have asked if there was something wrong when I was feeling just fine. To compensate, I’ve found myself smiling forcefully when socializing with strangers, wanting to assure them that they don’t have to worry. That I’m O.K.

Perhaps my annoyance at being told to smile depends on who is doing the asking, and why. Which leads to my experiment: I stopped smiling at people for a day and gauged reactions, including my own.

For a few days, I didn’t smile at my patients as they came and went. I wanted to smile at them, but instead, I pressed my mouth into a straight line. I felt as if I was being incredibly rude, as if I’d betrayed a social contract. Forcing myself to not smile, it turned out, was even harder than forcing myself to smile that full day. 

One of those days, after I reached home, I held the elevator door open in my building for a woman in a wheelchair as we squeezed into the narrow space together. We nodded hello and for a moment I forgot about the experiment and my lips shaped out without thinking: I smiled. Not an obligatory smile, not a coerced one, but a moment of sincere connection. She smiled back. And I felt good