Tuesday, April 15, 2008

Happiness is...

I had forgotten how much being told to smile raises my ire until it just happened a half an hour ago. I'm not a naturally smiley person. Oftentimes I think I must seem humorless - I'm pretty sure that I frown or scowl a fair amount of the time. It doesn't necessarily mean that I'm not happy - I mean, frequently I'm not, but I don't think that if I was I would be smiling all the time. It's just not the default for my face.

Usually it's strange men who tell me to smile. Like, on the street. I always wonder if guys ever get told to smile, because there's something that seems gendered about it. Like a dictate from an old etiquette book - young ladies should always wear a pleasing expression and have a sunny countenance, or some shit like that. When I temped last summer, a guy who worked at the law firm where I was kept saying, "Smile." It's terribly weird and disconcerting to be told to smile for someone else, especially someone you don't know. Like, if the smile is only for you, then what's it doing for me? There's something so terribly condescending about it, like I don't know my mood well enough, or like I should be smiling even when I don't feel like it.

I just needed to vent because my professor just told me to smile, that it would make me feel better, and it had the exact opposite effect in seriously pissing me off. My senior essay is due tomorrow. I'm physically and emotionally weary. This class has one super-self-absorbed person who yells all the time and rarely listens to anyone else, which in turn makes the class kind of miserable. In chatting with the professor at the end of class about my progress on my paper, he said, "Smile." I think I sort of gave a sarcastic half-grin and then went back to scowling. Because, seriously? I understand the sentiment, but I'm almost twenty-two years old and I know that smiling is not going to write any more words of this essay or get me another half-hour of sleep. I own my crankiness, and it works for me. I'll smile when I damn well want to.