Pretty when you smile
For as long as I can remember I have been told that I “look angry”. This puzzles me, because once I got my braces off and grew out of my adolescent punk rock rage–which really wasn’t even that severe (I am one of the only people I know that actually smiled for my senior pictures), I became a more or less well-adjusted person with a wide capacity for humor, amusement, and laughter. However, the one thing I do not generally do is smile when something is not funny or pleasing to me, and this bothers certain people. Certain people who are men.Have you, as a woman, ever heard the following:-”A smile wouldn’t kill you!”-”You’re so pretty when you smile!”-”Not that smiley, are you?”or just simply…-”SMILE!”Have you, as a woman, ever demanded of your male colleagues, co-workers, bosses, fellow students, relatives, boyfriends, baristas, tattoo artists, Wal-Mart employees, or random passersby on the street/sidewalk/subway, that they SMILE FOR YOU? That they would look so much more handsome if they showed their pearly whites? Do you feel like less of a woman if a guy doesn’t laugh at your joke about the monkey falling out of the tree because it had no arms?My case rests. This is sexism masquerading as social nicety, expecting women to maintain their traditional role of people-pleaser, nurturer and male ego-booster, even in the workplace or sitting in traffic or waiting in line at Dunkin Donuts. I will smile at you if I like you, or if something is funny to me, or if I fucking feel like smiling; I assume you will do the same, and that is okay with me.Women: what do you generally do or say when some guy asks you to smile for him? Let’s compile a list of suggested responses. “No” is a good place to start.
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