When I was a teenager it used to bother me alot. I’d be walking down the street, my mind wrapped around some deep thought and then out of nowhere some man’s voice would disrupt it with, “Baby girl, why don’t you smile?!” And it would bother me, but sometimes I’d still attempt a slight smirk in response, and then roll my eyes as I turned the corner. I’d think to myself, maybe I should be smiling all the time on city streets, and maybe those guys just want to see me happy. Maybe everyone should be smiling. But they weren’t. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve noticed the distinct trend of men telling women to smile, especially in public settings. It happens to me on the metro train, in grocery stores, and in malls- if my face doesn’t exude some sort of satisfaction or enjoyment, then something is wrong. Something must be wrong with women who are in deep thought, angry, pondering, or just not wanting to bend their face muscles.
Don’t tell me to “smile” when I am walking down the street unless you tell the young man behind me, the one with the frown crowding his face, to smile as well. Can you imagine? A man addressing another man on the street and telling them to “smile man, it’s not that bad.” The image in my head is almost comical and unreal, partly because I cannot conceive of that happening in reality.
I can envision it now; a society in which every woman smiles. It would be like an assembly line of homogenous facial expressions. Women would smile when studying, smile when giving birth, smile when grocery shopping, smile when changing a tire, smile when situations around them give them little to smile about, smile because it makes someone else feel better, and smile for any other reason than because they genuinely want to.
Sounds ludicrous huh? Well, because it is. Smiling is great and it’s something I tend to do a lot, but not at the request of a man who depends on my obedience to boost his ego or masculinity.
You know, I get that a lot also. Why is it so important for them to see me smile? Am I not beautiful unless I smile? Do I come off as not being friendly or something? Maybe if they attemp to stroke my intelligence before they make such comments maybe, and I mean maybe they’ll get a hint of a smile. I am not your puppet, I do not have strings attached to a stick that you can use for your convience. Ugh, it just makes me sick. Just like this one older guy told me that I have a lovely singing voice (I was singing Disco Lady by Johnnie Taylor) and he’d take me home. What nerve of him to say such things to a complete stranger. Does it occur to people that I may want to speak with you if you asked me how I was doing first? Some nerve!
I do understand that it can be unbearable to have people seemingly criticize you by implying that you “look sad” and generally looking sad is looking bad. And how sad do you look if you draw enough concern to have it mentioned and all those crazy self-esteem destroying thought processes. However to me it is obvious its not meant badly and the guy is justtrying to cheer you up. Its generally acceptable to say those kinds of things to the opposite sex in our society. I know from experience most women respond negatively to having that said to them so you are not alone in that, but please understand that guys really are different in that regard. Most guys would have their day really brightened by a girl reaching into their life however briefly and trying to cheer them up.
The command to “smile” is just a test. If he can “make you” smile in response, then he has power over you and he feels he has conquered you and won some imaginary battle. Should you smile, it would only reaffirm his male superiority and your subservience and submission. The next step is that he jumps up and comes after you with a compliment “see, you have a pretty smile, you should show it more often.” Okay so now you have some fool walking down the street with you. And you hate the fact that you even smiled in the first place.
Most women are afraid of the situation escalating and won’t speak up in situations like that and tell fools “mind your own face and don’t worry about mine!, and guys know it.
Agree with this. I once had one of these jackholes do the double-deadly “Smile, honey! Things can’t be THAT bad!” — the day after I found out my baby niece had leukemia.
These men don’t give a rat’s ass how you feel — it’s all about them exercising their constant, low-grade, gender power over a random woman.
fantastic article.
I love this blog post!! I know this is an older one, but I found it today when I googled the phrase, “don’t make me smile.”
I was in a meeting earlier today with a couple of coworkers when the male coworker stopped mid-sentence and began flailing his arms at a female coworker as she walked past the conference room we were in.
I asked what he was doing, and he said he was going to tell her to “SMILE!” while pointing at his face, but she didn’t noticed him. My immediate and uncontrollable response was, “that’s annoying, don’t ever do that.”
We all had a good laugh, because we do joke around with each other, but when the laughter died down I made sure to repeat what I said, and I made it clear that I wasn’t actually joking, please never say that.
I’m glad to find out that others agree. It’s annoying. Even if I’m not particularly unhappy, I’m not going to go around smiling for no reason like an idiot. Leave me alone.