Men, Stop Telling Me to Smile
By: Vena Moore
Tags: Feminism, Equality, Gender Roles, Sexism, Society

Men, Stop Telling Me to Smile

Photo by Etty Fidele on Unsplash

If anyone has written and published content over a significant period, they’re bound to get criticized. I’m no exception. Granted, it hasn’t happened often on this platform, but I’ve had my share of haters. As a Black queer woman, I’ve had to learn to grow a thick skin fairly early in life to deflect the constant assaults on my humanity, or else I wouldn’t survive. My writing is no different.

To elaborate, one hater recently posted a comment that made me snort. It wasn’t even a response to a story that I’d written but a response to a comment I made on another writer’s story relating some of my experiences navigating a world not designed for me. The last two sentences of the hater’s statement are as follows:

“Smile more. Free yourself from your self-induced bondage.”

For one thing, I’ll gladly free myself from my “self-induced” bondage, as this person called it, once I’m able to walk outside without fear of being leered at by lustful men. Or without fearing getting shot by a sadistic cop. Or once I get equity at any of the myriad things that white folx and men take for granted.

Secondly, the sentence, “Smile more,” likely gave away the hater’s gender because the only people that have ever told me to smile have been male.

Women smiling assures men that we’re agreeable and docile. Women frowning, looking disinterested or disappointed, frightens or displeases them. We’re then dismissed as overly hormonal beings who can’t get a handle on our feelings. Or we’re demonized as bitchy or manly for showing anger or for daring to express a strong opinion.

The expectation that women smile on command as though we are show animals performing a trick to please our trainers is sexist. Nobody orders men to do such a thing, do they?

The result is that men ordering us to smile reinforces the narrative that women only exist for the male gaze and pleasure. Society conditions men to assert control over women’s bodies. They are taught that their wants outweigh women’s autonomy, hence why men have no qualms advising even strange women to smile.

It should come as no surprise that I’ve had men known to me as well as strangers, tell me to smile throughout my entire life. I may have dealt with it more than other women because I’m regarded as bossy or unapproachable by society as a Black woman.

In particular, white men telling me to smile is not only sexist but racist as well. For decades, white people directing Black people to smile are attempting to gaslight themselves into thinking that white oppression isn’t hurtful, damaging, or dangerous. One needs only to view the immense racist iconography depicting smiling Black people, many of whom are depicted in the act of servitude. As long as whites saw us smile while shining their shoes or scrubbing their floors, they could pretend that we were happy and content to stay in our place.

For me, operating under the white and the male gaze means that I’m supposed to smile even when my cheeks ache. So my level of exhaustion is constant that no amount of rest ever dissipates.

Until the person (likely a man) wrote that comment telling me to smile recently, I couldn’t tell you the last time I was ordered to do so. Certainly not since March, when the pandemic upended our lives. I don’t step outside my house without a mask these days. Having half of my face obscured while in public has been a godsend because, for the time being, I’m not forced to appear happy to make some people comfortable around me.

I’m sure some people reading this will think that I’m blowing this out of proportion and that men mean no harm when they tell me to smile. But trust me, the intent isn’t harmless. Men commanding me to smile is intrusive and an attempt to rob me of my agency. Given everything that I’m dealing with just this year alone, with COVID surging out of control in my country along with racial unrest, I have justifiable reasons NOT to smile. Yet, men are so fragile that I’m directed to assuage their egos by appearing pleasant.

So, men, I’m not smiling for you. I’m not a show pony who does tricks on command. If you wouldn’t do something a total stranger ordered you to do, don’t do it to me.

©Vena Moore 2020