I spent several years of my childhood dancing. Jazz, ballet, hip-hop, tap and company performance: I spent hours a week for years dancing in front of mirrors and audiences. I can’t even count how many times I was told, “Remember to smile!” When I got my first job, even on bad days my manager would remind me to smile at the customers. You know when it’s not appropriate to tell someone to smile? Basically anytime a stranger decides I’d be prettier with a smile on my face.
Most girls, especially in a Southern city like Columbia, can recall at least one time in their lives in which a man, usually a stranger, has asked her to smile. As if he had some sort of claim to our faces and what we do with them. As if we were there just for him to look at, and he wanted a better view. If I’m walking down the street, or watching the game at Willy B, and I’m not smiling, it’s because I don’t want to. And some stranger coming up and telling me to smile more, or asking why I’m not smiling, doesn’t make that better. Thank you for trying to control my thoughts and feelings by trying to control my body. If that sounds nonconsensual to you, that’s because it is.
And boys, it’s not flirting. It might seem like a smooth line to you — “Hey girl, you’d look prettier with a smile on your face.” Not only is that offensive in that you’re deciding what she should be doing and how she should be feeling, but you’re also objectifying her and making her incredibly one-dimensional. Maybe she’s just not happy. Maybe, instead of being an empty-headed vapid female body, she’s an actual person with her own life and her own feelings about it. And if you deliver a smooth line like that and she doesn’t immediately beam a smile your way, she’s probably not being a cold bitch, she’s probably just really unimpressed with you.
This isn’t something that women only hear from strangers. A friend of mine once told her that her parents would continually police her expressions as a child. If she dared make an expression they didn’t like, they’d tell her “that face doesn’t make you look very pretty.” While this may seem like harmless coaching to ensure their child didn’t embarrass them, it’s actually telling that kid that her feelings don’t belong to her and aren’t as important as being something nice to look at.
When I was growing up and I did something ugly like talk with my mouth full or make a dumb face when concentrating on something, someone would tell me, “wow, that’s attractive,” in a sarcastic manner, letting it be clear how not cute they thought I was being. Parents, siblings and close friends would do it. In my family, it became a common back and forth, with the kid then responding with “well I wasn’t trying to attract you.” And that, right there, is a totally legitimate answer. It’s not my job as a woman to always be attractive, despite what the media, politics, music or professionalism might try to tell me. Maybe if men stopped treating women like they owed them or something, we’d actually have more things to be happy about. My smile doesn’t belong to you, and you have no right to demand to see it.