Several men -- all strangers -- have told me to smile over the years. At work, on the street, in a store -- I'd hear variations of: "Why aren't you smiling?", "You should smile; you'd look prettier", or just flat-out "Smile!" I assumed it was some awkward form of flirtation, so I generally managed to force out a weak attempt. But it always made me feel uncomfortable and a bit irritated.
Commanding a strange woman to smile isn't exactly the pinnacle of good manners, so why did I feel compelled to do as I was told? Am I supposed to just grin like a fool on command? Don't I have a right to have a shitty day or simply not to feel like walking around with a Stepford-wife smile perpetually glued onto my face? It always felt kind of absurd and controlling.
I hadn't given it much thought until discovering that other women deal with this crap too. Just google "men telling women to smile" to see how common it is. Contrary to what I'd assumed, this is more than just a lame pick-up line. Why would some random jackass think it's at all acceptable to tell a strange woman to smile for him like a trained chimpanzee? What right does he have to dictate to a stranger how she should behave?
Well, if he believes he's more powerful than she is, then he probably believes that he does have the right. And the woman who smiles on command, however begrudgingly, may unconsciously agree. A recent study has found that those who break conventional rules of politeness were perceived as being more powerful. Examples of "powerful" behavior included: smiling less, interrupting others, overstepping boundaries, and speaking in a loud voice. In the study, those who acted rude, inconsiderate, or overbearing were seen as more able to get people to do what they wanted, more in control, and more competent in making decisions.
What would happen if a woman acted in a similarly condescending way? How many women tell male strangers, "Smile, it can't be that bad"? If they did, would they be seen as powerful, or would they just be seen as domineering bitches? We're socialized to be sweet, polite, and nice little girls who turn into sweet, polite, and nice little ladies. We may have gained a significant amount of power in the last hundred years, but we're still expected to act in pleasing ways and smile on command no matter how powerful we are -- or else we'll face the repercussions. And what are those repercussions? Well, there's a good chance that we'd be called a bitch or a cunt for refusing, because the kind of guy who'd command a woman to smile would be the same kind of guy who'd get defensive if she didn't.
In my previous post about how the media treat female politicians, I mentioned how powerful women often face gender-based attacks, which can be based on appearance (fat, ugly), sexuality (frigid, slut), femininity (butch, ball-breaker), or character (liberal, feminist). Even actions that appear to be compliments -- such as flirtatiously telling a woman to smile -- are attempts to direct how she acts and consequently serve as attempts to undermine her power.
When men tell women to smile on command, it's a boundary violation; it's an act of arrogance and dominance. It's a way to police women's behavior by making it pleasing to men. It's the underlying expectation that women should perform for men and serve their desires.
This sense of entitlement permits men to dictate what women should do with their bodies -- whether it's smile, look sexually available, or give birth whether they want to or not.
If this study's results can be broadly applied, then we associate “power” with being inconsiderate, overbearing, and controlling as a culture. This runs contrary to how women are expected to behave (or even how decent men should behave, for that matter). Either the rest of us are going to have to start acting more obnoxiously ourselves, or we're going to have to start redefining power in less obnoxious ways.
Maybe then I'll feel like smiling.
