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Lessons in smiling for complete strangers

Caperton

I used to walk to and from work, my mile-long round trip taking me past plenty of men from all walks of life who were very concerned with my mental state as reflected on my face. “Smile, beautiful!” they would say, or, “Give us a smile, honey,” or, my favorite, “It can’t be that bad!” (He was right; all that had happened was that a friend’s mom had just died from cancer.) I felt so bad for letting them down by showing them my actual emotional state or, more likely, my standard bitchy resting face (since strange men on the street aren’t the only people I don’t smile at compulsively every second of the day).

If only the Smile Bitch Training Camp had a branch in Birmingham.

brb off to find a pencil.

(Are you, in fact, struggling to smile in New York City? See more videos from Janelle James and check her Web site for upcoming appearances.)

Transcript:

Standard shot over the heads of a fast-moving crowd on a New York sidewalk.

FEMALE VO. The demands of life in New York City making it difficult to smile all day, every day, like a lady should?

We follow a woman with a backpack as she walks down the street past a series of men.

MAN 1. Damn, girl, let’s see that smile. It’s a beautiful day for you to be making that face. … Oh, you just gonna frown away?

MAN 2. Hey, you better smile, bookbag.

MAN 3. Hey, hey. Why you don’t smile, bitch?

Accompanied by a SFX chime, the Smile Bitch Training Camp appears onscreen.

MAN 3. Smile!

A series of women in a training gym offer stiff, uncomfortable smile-grimaces to the camera.

FEMALE VO. Well, now, at the Smile Bitch Training Camp, we ensure that you smile like a lunatic at all times!

Pan down a row of women clutching pencils between their teeth to force a smile, doing sit-ups with pencils in their teeth, and keeping a smile in the face of unwelcome attention from men.

By the time it’s over, you’ll be able to smile through any horrible circumstance the world throws at you. Through a system of physical and psychological torture, we’ll make sure that you never wipe that smile off your face.

A man on the street pulls a woman’s cheeks into a smile.

Maybe your dog died.

A student turns to the camera and grins, accompanied by a chime.

Smile!

She skips down the street with him.

Lost your job?

Another grin from another student, with chime.

Smile!

The screen flashes static for a moment before shifting to a black-and-white shot of a woman who is decidedly not smiling.

WOMAN. Maybe it’s your fucking face and you don’t feel like smiling.

The screen statics back to the smiling face of a student.

FEMALE VO. Anyway.

WOMAN 2. Thanks to the Smile Bitch Training Camp, guys never have to have their day ruined by seeing my unhappy face.

She grins with a chime. Another woman smiles with a man outside.

WOMAN 3. It’s great! Come here!

Big hug. Then cut to a slow-mo shot of smiling SBTC students walking down the sidewalk.

FEMALE VO. The Smile Bitch Training Camp. ‘Cause you’re a lady.

Mr. Smile Bitch jumps into the frame to deliver one final instruction to the camera.

MAN 3. Why don’t you smile, bitch?

36 thoughts on Lessons in smiling for complete strangers

  1. While I do think people in general should smile more, the way I go about it (when I think of it, which is not that often) is to smile myself and hope for contagion. It wouldn’t come to my mind to call a stranger out on this, and I seriously wonder what the guys who do that think they are actually doing.

    I must confess that some months ago I discretely observed a woman who was sitting a few seats away from me in the tramway, because I wanted to see her smile which, given that she was reading a Discworld book (The Truth, if memory serves) was guaranteed to happen – and it did, spectacularly so. Had she left the tramway before I did, or had I before she did, I’d have risked a remark about her reading choice (maybe a simple “ook” in passing), but alas we stopped at the same station so I didn’t dare to, for fear of creeping her out.

    1. Unfortunate, but the creator of the video explained herself: it just so happens that among the male comedian friends of hers she enrolled on this, the black ones had the funniest delivery. The sad thing is that now this video needs a explanative note as a result.

  4. I started responding to smile orders with DANCE, PUPPET. I don’t know if the point got through, but it generally confused them enough to leave me the hell alone.

  5. While I do think people in general should smile more …

    Why? I mean, really. The OP and the video were about how louts hanging out on the street use the “Smile!” exhortation and its variants to sexually harass women. That should be enough reason to avoid the practice.

    But are not “people in general” already sufficiently monitored and audited and bombarded with commercial and political messages about what they should think and how they should feel? I find this insistence on smiling all the time damned annoying. Must we all walk around constantly simpering like game-show contestants or news anchors?

    1. Yeah, really! It’s especially ridiculous when you live in a city. I understand that maybe for suburbanites there’s a huge distinction between private and public spaces, and when you’re in a public space maybe you’re always “on” and receptive to interactions with others (so, maybe smiling). But in the city, I do a considerable portion of my personal private living outside of my apartment. If I’m out with a neutral expression on my face that indicates that I’m not receptive to an interaction at the moment, it’s not because I’m being a rude jerk! It’s because I’m fucking thinking about something other than just projecting a welcoming vibe to every single human I pass on the sidewalk. Taking issue with this seems really…self-absorbed? Like lacking the imagination necessary to realize that my facial expression isn’t about you, or my specifically wanting to reject an interaction with you.

        2. Thanks trees for the link to that interesting (and perfectly relevant) article. I can get how sometimes as a “psych-up” exercise before a presentation or an interview, for example, the fake smile can be a useful element. But as a general, all-the-time, “smile; you’ll feel better” thing? No. If you need to remind yourself all the time, there is an underlying problem that is not being addressed.

          Also, the problems that women, especially, can run into if they are just smiling indiscriminately at everybody on the street.

        4. Also interesting:

          Smile! It could make you happier.

          It also talks about how supressing emotions doesn’t help but smiling can make you happier.

          This had been my understanding as well, which is why the more recent study challenging the earlier conclusions sparked my interest.

        6. I’ve never advocated fake smiles.

          Oh, okay, but when you say things like:

          While I do think people in general should smile more, the way I go about it (when I think of it, which is not that often) is to smile myself and hope for contagion.

          and

          Why? Because health.

          it’s implied that folks will be faking at least some of the time. In the case of your experience with the cashier

          but I was also a little bit of sunshine in her otherwise probably shitty workday.

          you assume the smile is genuine, when it’s just as likely that she was simply performing to job expectations. Which is really the whole point of the video: women are required to be pleasant, regardless of their authentic emotional state.

        7. After thinking about it some more, I think I get how I’ve been too vague about my statement that people should smile more. I didn’t mean it as people having a perpetual super-happy shiny smile, or even smile to each others at random. I just meant that overall people (particularly in a city) tend to be way too frowny and tense, and that it would be healthier if they were a bit more relaxed. Granted, I reckon that life as it goes doesn’t make it easy to most people – and I’m saying this as someone who suffers for a lot of issues including clinical depression. Come to think of it, maybe it’s because I know I’m depressed that I sometimes pause to interrupt my loop of bitter thoughts, and try to focus on sweeter things in order to relax and stop reflexively grinding my teeth.

          As for my anecdote with the cashier, I did point out that she hadn’t smiled to the customers in line before me, which is what had triggered my thoughts about how tedious her job was, and how those customers weren’t very congenial to begin with. A side point of mine is that people who want to be smiled at by cashiers, waiters, and such, should learn to at least play their part.

          All of this is a bit tengential to the topic here, though.

  6. And then when you do smile, their own smile drops off and it’s all “augh! gaaaaah! Stop smiling! STOP SMILING!”

    Can’t win.

  7. I’ve just moved to the city, and I’ve had my first experience with this. Unfortunately, the guy works at my train stop, and every morning he’s telling me, “I’ll get you to smile one day.” So I have to deal with it every morning.

    I fucking hate mornings and prefer to space out and not have to deal with anyone, let alone pretend I’m happy to see a guy who apparently feels that the young woman (and not any of the men that pass us by) needs to greet him sunnily each morning.

    But as I don’t really have cognitive function in the morning (part of the reason I’m so grumpy) to express myself well, I don’t think it would go off so well. Perhaps if I give him a good glare on Monday, he’ll get it.

  8. While I do think people in general should smile more

    This is not about smiling, it’s about asserting power over women. Ironically, just yesterday I was complimented from a woman in a car while I was walking in Brooklyn. (She said ‘I love your shades.’ I smiled, looked away shyly and said thank you.) I had no worries at all that she was going to follow me and keep up the compliments to the point where they morph into harassment. There may be women who do harass men like that but I or anyone else I know has never experienced that. Yet, nearly every woman I know has had a guy pull that kind of shit one her. It’s totally fucked up.

    I too, think people should smile more, and I think if we lived in a world that cared more about fairness, equality, justice, and peace more people would smile.

    1. An anecdote: some months ago, I was in the file at a grocery store, an I noticed that the cashier didn’t smile. At all. I briefly thought to myself that it was a tedious job and it was no wonder if she was a bit dry with customers who themselves weren’r that shiny. Then I dropped the thought because I was getting my change ready. It’s only a few minutes later that I realised that she had smiled, to me, when it was my turn. I simply had gone the polite and amiable way I’ve been taught to use by default with everyone. And as a result, she did smile to me.

      When I finally understood what had happened, it felt good, on many levels. Not only it was a nice reminder that I’m more congenial than I tend to credit myself to be (really important for someone suffering of SAD), but I was also a little bit of sunshine in her otherwise probably shitty workday.

      1. As a former cashier at one of the worst big-box stores in the world and a long-time customer service provider:

        Get over yourself.

        We *have* to smile. Even though we’ve been on our feet all day and our breaks are 2 hours late, we have to smile. Even though we’ve been sexually harassed by creepy dudes that come through our line, we have to smile. Even though we’re in pain but we can’t get off from work because we work 1 hour less than what would qualify for full-time and health benefits, we have to smile.

        Even though some random dude is nice and cordial and takes pity on the poor cashier because her job sucks, most of the time we want you to move the fuck along because as soon as you leave she can run to the bathroom before another customer – DAMMIT! Too late!

        1. And yet I’m still happy for having been the nice customer. What was it you were trying to do with your post again?

        2. So…congratulations for not being an asshole?

          Was that the point of *your* post?

          Sorry-not-sorry for being fresh out of cookies.

        3. Well, the reason why I remember that event so vividly is because I suffer from SAD and it was a nice rebuffal to my usual stupidly anxious self.

        4. So you didn’t, in fact, do anything *for her* as your previous post implied. *She* was the one who helped you.

        5. Oh my god, you’re right! I’m secretly a selfish asshole! Thank you for showing me the light!

          Joke aside, don’t you have anything better to do than twist my words to suit your prejudices?

      2. but I was also a little bit of sunshine in her otherwise probably shitty workday.

        That came across kind of patronizing to me. Not to mention, you say that “polite and amiable” is your default setting, yet you are practically dislocating your shoulder patting yourself on the back for behaving in a way that is allegedly your everyday modus operandi. But what i find most disturbing of all is that you wrote 2 paragraphs premised on a smile that probably had nothing to do with you or your amiable ways.

        1. Okay, I probably got a bit carried away and hyperbolic when I posted that last stuff about sunshine. It’s not so much that I’m patting myself on the back, it’s that it was a reminder that I’m more socially apt than my S.A.D. usually lets me aknowledge, which is an important information for someone afflicted by this condition. I see how the importance of this can elude someone who doesn’t know that illness.

          As for the smile being linked to me? Occam’s Razor: the customers before me were barely polite, I’m not sure they even just greeted her, and she didn’t smile to them.

  9. I guess I’ve been lucky. Lots of dudes stop me to tell me to smile, but it’s rarely followed up with “bitch.” I reflexively smile (honestly, it’s just fucking easier and safer), but I think if someone dropped a “bitch” after, I’d be too shocked to do anything.

  11. And when you do smile, this happens-http://www.huffingtonpost.com/karen-cordano/running-while-female_b_5562343.html

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