NinjaPenguin sent in an amazing link on men asking women to smile more. Quotes from the post:
So here’s the take-home lesson, ladeez. Smile and dress nice and act like a lady – and you will be considered to be a silly, thoughtless, insignificant girl. Don’t smile and dress for comfort and you will be considered to be a ball-busting, man-hating lesbian bull-dyke – or, possibly, Ozzy Ozbourne. You will be called a trope, or a caricature feminist, or a reverse sexist, or a slut, or frigid. You will be said to have fucked too much, or in need of a good fucking, or your problem will lie in the fact that no one wants to fuck you, in which case you need a good fucking but are unlikely to get one. But no matter who you are, and what is wrong with you – because, mark my words, something is ALWAYS wrong with you – there will always be some damn asshat around the corner just waiting to cheerfully insist that you smile, smile, smile!
What I found really interesting about the idea of obligatory smiling is how often I experience it in the context of street harassment – after my husband deployed in July, I couldn’t step outside my apartment without some “helpful” gent suggesting that I smile… because obviously my personal turmoil is less important than my role as a scene-setter in someone else’s glorious summer-time promenade. Perhaps next time I’ll remember to color coordinate with the flowers and brownstones, so that it is truly a perfect day. After all, women aren’t allowed to be the main character in their own stories — me, walking around, thinking my own thoughts and doing my own thing… well, it’s like a prop suddenly realizing that a film about the adventures of Wilhelmina the Light Bulb could be absolutely fascinating. It’s SILLY, it is, and that light bulb? She needs to be reminded that she’s a prop, that her story’s about being the bright light in someone else’s day.
More seriously, though, it’s scary for me when someone tells me to smile. It’s a command, generally from a stranger, and is an attempt to reduce me to an object. It’s also an attempt to force a literally primal kind of submission – primates give an appeasing smile when backing down from a dominant group member, to demonstrate that they are afraid. Plus, this kind of heckling can escalate very quickly.The scariest time actually happened to me a few weeks ago: I was kneeling down to tie my shoes, and this guy leaned out the bus window to take a picture of me. He said, “Smile, big tits!” And then laughed, grinning back at me, like he must’ve just made my day. I called the police, since taking that kind of voyeurism is illegal in the US… but as you’ll see from some of the links I’m including, something being illegal doesn’t mean it’s not acceptable. Being female-bodied means that you cannot assume any reasonable or enforceable expectation of privacy, regardless of whether we’re talking emotions (“Smile! It can’t be THAT bad!”) or physical (“We can’t let women make their own decisions about their bodies!!”) or visual (“If she didn’t want her picture taken, she shouldn’t have gone outside!!!!”). Because sexual harassment like this falls on a spectrum of behaviors where women’s bodies are objectified, Hollaback engages in so many types of activist work not centered on street harassment.
BUT SERIOUSLY, FOLKS, the real victims here are poor straight men, who can’t tell hot chicks they want to bang them. :eyeroll:
Thoughts? Any good come-backs for when someone tells you to smile?
{ 114 comments… read them below or add one }
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That sounds kind of like a try to get you to act more “manly” and suppress those emotions of yours. Also a troubling thought, though as a woman I’ve only ever experienced the USian version which feels like a demand on the part of the person (always a man, for me) for me to smile because they can’t be bothered to realize I’m a person with my own things going on who should be told to smile just because some stranger tells me to.
I hate anyone telling someone what to do in this way, and I find your experience is bad, but at least there’s that undercurrent which recognizes that you’re experiencing an issue as opposed to the one I get that tells me “you exist right now only to smile for me because I said so.”
The Other Anne(Quote) (Reply)
Even if it is just “buck up”, I still find it aggravating. Because it never happens to me when I might need cheering up. It only happens to me when I’m lost in thought. Having a stranger talk to me derails whatever I was thinking about, and realizing they had absolutely no point to this interruption does nothing but piss me off.
And even if I did need cheering up, a stranger telling me to smile wouldn’t do it. A stranger smiling and cheerily wishing me a good afternoon might – but ordering me to rearrange my face? Not so much.
Sylvia Sybil(Quote) (Reply)
Fabulous post!
Ew. I’ve gotten this before, and it makes me hideously uncomfortable. I never know what the person asking wants, and, frankly, I don’t *want* to know; I just want them to leave me alone.
Dani(Quote) (Reply)
My comeback is generally just, “No.”
I tend to look very grumpy when I’m not smiling. It’s something about my eyebrows and the downward tilt of my mouth at its resting position. So, when someone tells me to smile I tend to assume they are assuming I’m grumpy, but I’m not, which makes me, ironically, grumpy.
sbg(Quote) (Reply)
This reminds me, my MOM is actually the person who tells me to smile most (because apparently I look grumpy when I just try to be “expressionless/thoughtful/busy”). I tried telling her I DON’T SMILE so people actively avoid me but she said “YOU’RE JUST TURNING AWAY NICE PEOPLE!! THE WEIRDOS WILL BUG YOU NO MATTER WHAT YOU LOOK LIKE!”
She has a point, I GUESS but that’s still not gonna stop me from NOT smiling.[/don't give a fuck]
Casey(Quote) (Reply)
No, and it’s still imposing their view onto you, because they have no reason to assume it’s [i]not[/i] that bad.
SunlessNick(Quote) (Reply)
There needs to be a PSA or something about Hugo’s blog. His articles are insightful and interesting, but you have to stay away from the comments! He seems like a great guy but for some reason he lets all these MRAs stink up the place. I suppose he feels that by allowing them to be there, there’s a chance that something he says will stick and they’ll begin to change their mind. I won’t comment on that. Just save yourself the headache and don’t look.
Cinnabar(Quote) (Reply)
Yeah, I guess since he’s a relentlessly optimistic feminist guy he hopes to reach out to his fellow man (LITERALLY) in a misguided manner by letting these assholes with a hateful grudge wank all over the place. (he should totally hire someone to mod the site…PREFERABLY MEEEEEEH!
;):P)
Also, aside from guest posts from him and Amanda Marcotte et. all, The Good Men Project website is an MRA shit-fuck too!
Casey(Quote) (Reply)
I am very introverted and suffer from depression. I smile about as much as Batman or Prince Zuko.
I have never, ever been told to smile by a stranger.
Anyone who claims this behavior isn’t very strictly gendered towards forcing women into a particular role is either ignorant or lying.
Patrick McGraw(Quote) (Reply)
You know, I was better about this when I was younger.
I used to just give the straight blank stare to people when they randomly demanded that I smile. Of course, I had been in a long, drawn out fight with multiple cello teachers since I was 5 on the subject of smiling. I had this habit, of you know, concentrating on my music? And forgetting to SMILE! When I was playing, but I never really heard the boys in any of my classes being lectured on the same thing. It drove me crazy. So when random strangers would tell me to smile, it just felt like an extention of the same fight, and would usually result in a blank stare or scowl.
Now that I’m not fighting it on a regular basis, I tend to automatially smile, because I’m expected to be appeasing, and non-confrontational to random jerks who demand my attention when I’m minding my own business.
TansyJ(Quote) (Reply)
Huh. I pretty much never smile, even when I’m happy, and I’ve been told that I generally look pretty pissed off. No one ever tells me to smile. I wonder why?
Nicky P(Quote) (Reply)
Are we saying “Good Men Project” is Hugo’s blog, or is there another I don’t know about? GMP is a weird place– I want to like it, but then suddenly they’ll give “equal treatment” to MRAs which is…gross & stupid.
mordicai(Quote) (Reply)
I agree with everything you are saying– it IS dominance behavior, but like a great number of social cues, negative stuff is positively reinforced. Catcallers know that they are being jerks– even if they act like it is okay– but these guys don’t necessarily know that what they are doing is asserting that women are common property on display for them. Which is why I think those men need to be educated– which I don’t think is a controversial thing to say? & mind you– my point is that it is when STRANGE men are around, because my point is that it is a gross dominance & ownership behavior.
mordicai(Quote) (Reply)
The whole reason that I mention that it isn’t something I confront is because I’m checking my backpack– I don’t think that rules me out from entering a conversation on the subject.
mordicai(Quote) (Reply)
I’m certainly not being an apologist for the behavior– but rather proposing solutions to the behavior? Men should be involved in gender studies, which seems to be what you are saying as well. I’m not saying it is incumbent on the target of inappropriate statements to be the educator, but noting that insidious social behaviors need to be addressed.
mordicai(Quote) (Reply)
Mordicai, I don’t think anyone is calling you an apologist.
I will say that the reason I’m troubled by your posts is that…
1. You’re describing street harassment as a behavior, NOT as a problem.
2. You’re naming what conditions it happens under (even though you say you don’t know a lot about it, and other posters who have experienced it are saying that your theorizing isn’t correct) and describing it as a series of isolated incidents vs a systemic issue
3. You’re excusing this “behavior” and implying that it’s defensible because of a lack of knowledge
4. and suggesting that “if they only knew better!”/”it’s an accident!” is part of what makes this part of the system go — think about it like an apology. For an apology to be real you have to recognize the other person as someone able to be hurt/offended/injured, acknowledge what you did as wrong, and acknowledge that you are capable of doing something wrong. By focusing on men and excusing/explaining their behavior, you’re ignoring women and what they’re describing as an offense.
This last I find frustrating because it removes the intentionality from sexist behavior.
Maria(Quote) (Reply)
I would add that this sort of harassment is a learned behavior. It’s not like guys come out of the womb thinking this is okay, and need to have it explained to them that it’s not. No one ever suggested I should go around commanding people to smile, and no one ever did that around me, so it never occurred to me to do that. It is, after all, an odd thing to do (it’s a little odd just to GREET a stranger, let alone tell them what to do with themselves).
So education isn’t exactly the problem. Re-education of confused men would be immediately helpful, but the root of the problem is a culture in which women’s bodies exist to please men, and men who aren’t pleased feel entitled to offer criticism. Commanding a total stranger to “smile” is exactly as rude as telling
a stranger to lose weight. Or dance. Or strip.
Jennifer Kesler(Quote) (Reply)
That’s usually my response. Or I channel Daria: “I only smile when I have a reason.”
Chai Latte(Quote) (Reply)
Naw, I’m talking about Hugo leaving guest posts/articles on GMP.
(but I was taking about Hugo’s personal blog SPECIFICALLY first)
The first instance of gross and stupid MRA-dom on GMP was a post about how YOU SHOULD NEVAR, EVAR GET MARRIED (on which I agree)…because that harpy gold-digging bitch of a wife will divorce you and take you to the cleaners ‘cuz the courts are a part of an ebil feminazi conspiracy to drain men of their money (fail).
The second instance was a post about men suffering street harassment, with a whole chorus of MRAs in the comments section talking about how they got their crotches/asses pawed at and kissed against their will by female friends/acquaintances/co-workers and since they’ve never seen a woman get harassed/assaulted IT OBVIOUSLY DOES NOT EXIST AND MEN HAVE IT SO MUCH WORSE!!1
(I guess they don’t realize those women got away with that stuff ‘cuz they were colluding with patriarchy?)
Casey(Quote) (Reply)
When I was a cashier at Wendy’s I got reported to my manager for not smiling. (There was nothing else wrong with that order at all… I just wasn’t smiling. Except I was smiling, as far as I could tell.) The manager knew very well that I’m the kind of person who is almost always smiling, so he didn’t do anything about it, but if I hadn’t been one of the cheery bouncy shiny rule-follower employees, there would have been a write-up because of customer complaint.
Because smiling at Wendy’s is corporate policy and customers feel entitled to it.
Ara(Quote) (Reply)
Worse than that, apparently this customer felt entitled to get you into trouble over it. Because it’s not enough you’re working for min wage and going home smelling like a fry basket so he can eat cheap food.
Jennifer Kesler(Quote) (Reply)
It frustrates me too because I usually instinctively smile when told to… and then feel even more annoyed that they got the reaction they wanted, like a loss of control.
Shuu(Quote) (Reply)
So how does anyone think they’re owed more by a food employee than the food they pay for? A rhetorical question, I know how.
SunlessNick(Quote) (Reply)
How about practicing a really creepy, serial-killer smile?
SunlessNick(Quote) (Reply)
I find it significant that the only male people I have ever seen given this order are teenager boys working in low status service jobs, particularly if they dress unconventionally or wear piercings or make-up. “Smile, kid!” Definitely a power dynamic there!
lilacsigil(Quote) (Reply)
I’ve seen prepubescent boys, old men, and men with disabilities told to smile too. Power dynamic oh so very much. Of course in my experience, it’s usually women telling the old men and men with disabilities to smile. Don’t know why.
Attackfish(Quote) (Reply)
While I mentioned that I get women telling me to smile, it’s usually women who are noticeably older than me. (Where it’s not, they’re usually explicit about saying I look like I need cheering up).
In these cases, as well as a power dynamic, I think there’s an easy-feelgood dynamic, in that they think telling someone to cheer up is in itself comforting, and doesn’t take any effort on their part. It’s still “I’z arbitrate your mood” though.
SunlessNick(Quote) (Reply)
Hmm. It’s not really the same dynamic everyone else is describing (the hi you exist for my sexual or visual gratification way), but usually if someone tells me to smile it’s in this patronizing… here you obviously don’t know how to function in polite society so let me tell you how to do it kind of way. I usually write it off as an unconnected microaggression but it’s illuminating to see it all laid out like this.
I THINK I’ve experienced the young, low-end service job version too but the only circumstances I can remember right now are the former.
Shaun(Quote) (Reply)
I think you are definitely stretching my comments. Of course it is a problem; me saying it is a behavior is descriptive, not categorical. Of course it is systemic– I never implied that it was a series of isolated incidents. You want me to check my privilege (rightly so) but when I acknowledge that this isn’t something I personally deal with BECAUSE of my privilege, you…condemn me for saying it doesn’t happen? That isn’t what I’m saying at all. I’m saying I don’t have first hand experience, but that diminishes MY viewpoint on the matter, not those who actually face it. I mention my involvement in it– that I don’t frequently see it, despite knowing that it exists, & that I theorize that the “umbrella of ownership” is assumed because of my presence. This is an additional symptom of why it is MESSED UP.
& yes, you are calling me an apologist. Your fourth point explicitly uses those terms, either. & I’m okay with that– critical readings of things I’m saying don’t hurt my feelings & we aren’t in a conversation about my feelings anyhow. I am saying– please don’t take what I am saying as an apology for these acts, or as an excuse for their intention. I’m certainly not. I don’t want my comments to be misconstrued; I didn’t come her to deny the thesis of the article but rather to agree with it, & that I’m glad it was said succinctly.
What I AM saying is that men are responsible for their own actions, & for perpetuating a culture of objectification in which somehow it is okay to tell a total stranger how to feel & how to behave– as long as she’s a woman. & that isn’t alright. What I AM saying is that this should be addressed & dealt with, because men are at fault. What I AM saying is that gender issues should be taught, because it ISN’T an accident. It is a widespread part of a patriarchal culture the assumes that men have the right to control women. I am saying that there should be a concerted effort to educate people on this culture, because it is destructive & maladaptive.
mordicai(Quote) (Reply)
*facepalm* I had hope for GMP, I really did. I really like David Futrelle’s article on MRA’s that they had there. If anyone wants to read it, it does a very good job of taking apart exactly what is problematic about MRA’s: http://goodmenproject.com/ethics-values/dismantling-the-mens-rights-movement/
And his site, Manboobz, is a great place to work off rage at or desensitize yourself to MRA’s by laughing your ass off at them: http://www.manboobz.com/
Both these sites are good to point out to fence-sitters who don’t know the difference between wanting equal rights for all genders and MRA’s. But a gigantic TRIGGER WARNING applies for Manboobz, even for the posts; and as always, DON’T LOOK DIRECTLY AT THE COMMENTS!
Cinnabar(Quote) (Reply)
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