Getting citations from the smile police. Ugh!

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You're all going to bang me.....but people look better in pictures when they smile.

I am reviving this old thread to post a comedian riffing on this same topic:

Smiling is a valuable skill, and well worth learning.

I used to never like my face in photos, up until age 16. Someone told me to just relax my face, rather than telling me to smile, and the photo turned out great. Relaxing my face felt great, and so I had a small natural smile. YMMV, but it looked natural, and made my face look better than a big smile.

Years later, after I realized that my default face settings diminished my effectiveness, I started getting in the habit of using that trick more often, and eventually that little smile became my default face setting.

The Facial Feedback Hypothesis is worth knowing. Pick a source which suits you, there's a lot written about it.

Instead of getting annoyed at people for doing what they aren't going to stop doing, you could learn a valuable new skill. Philosophically, I want to live in a more beautiful world, so I make myself as attractive as possible in order to contribute to the general sense of a more beautiful world. Like the Style Golden Rule, or something.

When I worked as a cashier I often got requests from men to smile, never women. They would often say "smile, it's not that bad," or "you look grumpy, smile for me." I usually responded by telling them that "I am not grumpy" or "I am smiling," then they would get all pissy and complain to the manager.

When people do this, it's one of my pet peeves because it's not only patronizing but controlling as well.

Years ago I worked at an airport in a food court when I was nearly 21. During those days, I functioned at the level of a 14 year old. This one time I sassed off at one of the managers because he was being condescending about talking during work after I made a general comment to a girl who I normally got along with. So I said, "Whatever" which I learned is a form of disrespect. So I tried to apologize but he said that it didn't cut it and started crying.

We also were affiliated with a bar and grill that had people coming into out side all the time. So one of the servers told me, "Turn that frown upside down." To me, it was another barb and it was something that I did not want to hear because I was already feeling humiliated.