Presentation

Main Points/Ideas to Hit:

- Women are often expected to be happy/friendly

- https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2017/03/08/dont-tell-women-
to-smile/98906528/

- The origins of this stereotype

- https://www.bustle.com/p/why-do-people-expect-women-to-smile-67360
- This stereotype has not always existed, originally smiling women were seen as
suspicious and sinful → this concept is a relatively new one
- The Mona Lisa serves as a controversial piece for displaying an image of women
from the past
- Advertising made the “woman smile” become more mainstream (ex: “The Kodak
Girl”)
- Taught to smile early in life so they are not perceived to be aggressive
- “Culturally inbuilt prejudice in the West”
- Racism also contributes to the demand that women should smile
- Smiling at work can be a “double edged sword” because it shows confidence but
can also be aggressive/territorial
- History of smiling in photography http://time.com/4568032/smile-serious-old-
photos/
- History of the smile and interview with man who wrote book called "The Smile
Revolution In Eighteenth Century Paris," http://www.wunc.org/post/history-
smile#stream/0
-

- How women respond to being told to smile

- https://www.usatoday.com/story/life/2014/06/22/please-stop-telling-
smile/11213659/
- Stop telling women to smile movement, puts street art up and includes videos of
women talking about being told to smile
http://stoptellingwomentosmile.com/Video

- Why women have learned to fake friendliness

- Avoid confrontation
- So others don’t feel uncomfortable/get annoyed
- Don’t want to be a nuisance
- To make both themselves and the person that they are interacting more
comfortable

- Personal examples
 - Family Events (having to hug and talk to people that you are not always
comfortable to do so with
- Interviews/more “professional” discussions (ex: meeting with Mr. Jones)

- Links that could be helpful

- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3285231/

Interactive Ideas:
- We could try smiling more at strangers and see results and discuss and link that to
something?
- Ask people to make a list of professionals who have to be friendly for their job
- Flight attendant
- Elementary school teachers
- Nurses
- Librarian
- counselors
- Ask people to write down female dominated professions
- Flight attendant
- Lower school teachers
- Nurses
- Counselors
- Social workers
- Do you see a connection that the females fill roles that have being happy in the job
description?
- Show this link and go through the list to show how many professions on it require
you to be friendly
- https://www.businessinsider.com/pink-collar-jobs-dominated-by-women-
2015-2
-Make a chart and have people contribute to the idea of what makes them smile throughout their
day, in what situations are they smiling?

-We could put up pictures of people smiling on the screen and ask people in the room to tell us
how the pictures make them feel? Could get people talking about the idea of smiling to make
other people comfortable, what does a smile from someone mean to you?
-pictures of people not comparison
Why is smiling a passing mechanism?
● Safety → displaying confidence
● Economic Reason → to get a job, required part of most/all jobs
● Social Mobility → taking on characteristics of other class (in the past, upper class
received better dental care, therefore showing teeth was sign of wealth)
● Play/fun → inherently part of it
● Academic/sociology → “participation grades” (if you are a quiet person, you are forced to
be more extroverted than you naturally are)
● Love/marriage → Smiles directly related to attractiveness, being a smiley couple is an
“ideal image” in society
● For respect/treated as a human, not second-class citizen →
● Experimental →
● Get into college/get a house → interviews, making good first impressions

Smiling as a gender-attributed trait

18 people including us and Ms. Daniels

Write down what you associate with the personality of a stereotypical female in today’s society
(2 min)

Make a list of professionals who maintain/display a positive/extroverted persona (2 min)

Make a list of female dominated professions (2 min)

Reason to pass focus: Social

History:

Mona Lisa
Kodak Girl

Questions to ask:
- Have you ever been told to smile?
- If so by who?
- How did it make you feel?
- Do you feel that smiling helps you succeed/ makes things easier?

Dr. Mathews Interview: Almost fired from whataburger

- Have her in the front bc she’s a young female and pretty
- Wanted to be a cook, but couldn’t
- No you else had to smile
Dr. Grimm
- Men tell her to smile in every setting
- Walks away from them
- Does fake smile because she’s mad and doesn’t want confrontation
Ms. Labbate
- If you aren’t always smiling and happy you must be having a bad day or should do “this”
more
- Plasters a fake smile and mentally flips them off
- Uses an outgoing persona to get her own way and get out of stuff
- Respect that she should get but doesn’t get because she’s not smiley and “feminine”
- When you’re seen as direct or intense people think she doesn’t like her job
Ms. McNamara
- No personal experience
- Heard it said to other people
- If people smile more they get along more
Ms. McClellan
- A male stranger told her to smile in manhattan
- It through her off
- Smiles more when she isn’t being understood

Amoreena O’Bryon
- Lots of times for photos, and people always tell her tell smile more
- Have to be friendly for job , especially being photographer so people would be more
comfortable with her taking photos
- Definitely smiles a lot to make yourself seem more open and friendly, if you don't smile
you are perceived closed off so she smiles a lot
- Bell's Palsy caused by tick bite made it so she couldn't smile, and that really upset her

Cheryl
- Smile more at the dmv
- Smile and cashiers are nicer

Kayla Sheehan
- People are intimidated by her
- She feels if she isn’t friendly then people don’t like her
- Feels the pressure to be as bubbly as her mom

Ms. Snyder
-Told to smile a lot, obvious one is everytime your cat called and you don't respond and your
told to smile
Not super feminine, not meeting feminine friendliness

If you are having a hard day, what gives you the right to do that. I get they are trying to make
you feel better but…

“If you smiled more, your life would be better”

“I get the impression, because i don’t think i smile aton, because when I’m in work mode im not
like that. I hear people say “i used to be really scared of you” What I am doing that makes
people think whatever

People assume because i’m not in that category, even though i’m wearing a certain skirt.

Mr. Machase
- He has experienced colleagues being told to smile and be approached
- Finds himself being conscious about his attitude
- When he gets a new job he feels the need to “lay it on thick”

Ms. Buinicky
- Yes def, told to smile, ones that stand out are the catcalling, men told her to cheer up,
was told in target the other day, thought candy was to expensive and men told her she
has to be happy when buying candy
- Approach someone and is confident and smiley people are more likely to hear what you
say
- Interviewer and interviewee it's kind of like a first date, when not smiling, it's not going
well.
PRESENTATION NOTES
ANG
- Hyper feminizing yourself by smiling and being outgoing
- What we mean is, for a woman to be perceived as feminine she is stereotypically
expected to smile
- We realize this isn’t truly passing, but it can be used as a passing mechanism and will
affect most of us in our lives
Interactive:
- ISLA Question 1
- KARSON Question 2
- ANG Question 3
- Do you see a connection between the 3 lists?
- Is there a reason that you think these professions are women dominated?
- Outgoing personas
- Stereotypically more outgoing/more likely to smile
- Do you think there are people who are not naturally outgoing that have one of these jobs
and have to fake it most days? Why do you think they do it?
ISLA
USA Today Article:
● "Telling anybody to do anything can rub you the wrong way, particularly if it’s not natural
to you," said biological anthropologist Helen Fisher
● Many men view smiling as subservient, weak and vulnerable. In fact, Fisher said, high-
testosterone men do not smile much, and overall use less facial expression. So, telling a
woman to smile might be pushing her back into a traditional stereotype.
● There’s a big difference between a real/genuine and a fake/forced smile (may not always
be recognizable but the difference is still there)
KARSON
Dr. Mathews
- Asked to be a cook, was top no because she was a pretty young female
- Was put at the cash register and told if she didn’t smile more you will be fired
- When she asked why the other cashiers were not being held to the same standards she
was told that they were not young pretty females
- Economic reason to hyper feminize herself
ANG
Ms. Labbate
- Finds people assuming that she doesn’t enjoy her job if she is not smiling
- When a male approaches her about doing something wrong she can put on a very
outgoing friendly persona to get out of it
- When she is not smiling males have approached her to say you should try “BLANK”
more
- Feels that she doesn’t always get the respect she deserves because she is more direct
and less feminine in that sense
KARSON
Ms. McNamara
 - Doesn’t have experience with having to hyper feminize herself because she is naturally
a very outgoing person
- No one tells her husband to smile more even though he has a more straight face

ISLA
Amoreena O’Bryon
- Her job as a photographer makes it so that she has to smile to make the people she is
taking a picture of more comfortable
- She wants to be seen as open and friendly so the people she is taking a picture of relax
and have a genuine smile not a fake uncomfortable smile
- Definitely smiles a lot to make herself seem more open and friendly, works in
communications so has to be a friendly person, “if you don't smile you are perceived
closed off” so she chooses to smile more
- She had Bell's Palsy for 14 days, was caused by a tick bite, made it so she couldn't
smile, Bell's Palsy paralyzes half of your face and that really gave her a different outlook
on smiling bc people felt uncomfortable if she tried to smile and bc it wasn’t perceived
the way a smile usually is and it upset her
-
-
ISLA / KARSON
Ms. Snyder:
- Catcalling is an obvious situation because when you don’t respond, you are typically told
to “smile”
- When having a bad day others may say “c’mon smile” in attempts to make you feel
better but… what really gives you the right to say that if you are unaware of the situation.
- She is not a super feminine female, therefore not meeting the feminine friendliness level
that others expect her to (people assume that she does not fall into the feminine
category due to this)
- Explained how many people have said to her at Emma “I used to be really scared of
you”/ she gets that impression from people because she doesn’t smile a ton when she is
in work mode, because that is not her natural inclination to be so extroverted.