If you’re female, I can guarantee you’ve been told to smile by a complete stranger while you’re walking down the street, in the supermarket, having a daydream or doing anything else while trying to mind your own business.
I really struggle to see why a man feels like he can command you to smile. It almost as if he thinks you’re in a bad mood and need cheering up, so telling you to smile will make you happy? Erm, no.
People don’t walk around with a grin on their face, that would be weird. It’s perfectly normal to have a neutral look on your face while you are going about your day.
I’m kind of getting fed up with men telling me to smile. It’s patronising and puts me in a dreadful mood.
When I’m told to smile, I feel like I have two choices. One is to smile – but then I feel like I’ve given in to this absurd request. The second is to just glare at them with my best ‘wtf’ face – but then I feel like they’re going to think I’m even more grumpier than they did before they saw my face and thought I needed to smile.
You just can’t win, can you? That’s what makes it so infuriating.
Has anyone else come up with a better response this because I would like to use it, please?
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I have heard of the crazy smile look as a response to this – it’s an alternative one, haha! I hate people telling me to smile. There’s obviously a reason I’m not smiling, what about thinking about that rather than demanding false cheeriness?
Hope you are having a nice weekend 🙂
Away From The Blue Blog
That is a dilemma, and its too bad men don’t stop to think about putting you in that position.
I suspect that men telling women to smile is just one more of the insidious and pervasively unenlightened trappings of men’s long history of the misogynistic treatment of women as chattel.
Sadly it doesn’t stop with mansplaining and trying to tell women what to do. I would have said it must be hard not to shake your head in disbelief at mens’ presumption of privilege in trying to tell women to smile, if it were not overshadowed so much by the bad influence emanating from the U.S. White House: Donald Trump Caught On Tape: “Grab Them By The Pussy” | The Daily Conversation – YouTube
Brett Kavanaugh, Trump’s pick for a lifetime seat on the U.S. Supreme Court, and his supporters in the Senate, appear to be equally disrespectful of women.
I sure hope that all changes soon. The much needed change has been a long time coming.
I have a guy at work that keeps telling me this, and I really have to stop myself slapping him after the 10th time he says it per day… Tania Michele xx