Please, can we eliminate chronic bitch face ladies? It isn't cute at any age, it's annoying, you don't look important or confident, and in your 40s, it is down right unattractive. I myself carried the look around for most of my adult life.
S M I L E
If you don't want to be invisible in your 40s (Part I, if you missed it), you need to retrain your face...you should learn to smile. It isn't hard, and you will not only change your own outlook on the day, you will make everyone you come into contact with remember you.
One evening, I'm guessing it was 2 or 3 years ago, while walking out to my car after a long day at work, a man, a stranger, said, "Hey, smile!" as he approached me. What a jack ass, telling me to smile. What if I don't feel like smiling? I drove home, seething mad, but before I reached my house, I gave the request barked at me by this random stranger some thought, and I realized two things:
- I was guilty of chronic bitch face
- I no longer wished to be a sour-faced looking shrew
Yes, it annoyed me that this guy told me to smile, but thankfully I let it soak in, in a positive way. It dawned on me, for the first time, that I actually thought walking around with a pensive, "don't you dare approach me" look on my face made me feel protected or hard as nails, completely unaware that I was giving off an I-am-so-lacking-in-confidence-that-I-must-show-you-how-aloof-and-uninterested-in-anyone-and-anything-I-am look. Ewww.
If people watching from afar was a paid profession, I would be a billionaire. I notice women who smile in crowds, because there are very few of them who do smile. Women who seem to smile for no reason are an enigma, and I instantly want to know more about them. I watched the women at the gym yesterday, call it research for this series, and I saw not one woman, of any age, smiling...except me.
When I'm walking down the street and come into contact with someone, male or female, I put on a true Duchenne smile, and I almost always get a great smile back. If you are in your 40s, 50s, 60s, etc., and you are in a group of attractive yet unsmiling, detached 20-somethings, and you smile, you will be noticed. Smiling at others shows an interest in something outside of yourself, something bigger than yourself, and others, especially strangers, see this, and you will not be invisible.
I read this quote a few months ago, and it is completely sexist (I don't know who said it, but it was more than likely a man): "Women who aren't smiling just aren't as decorative." I'm going to apply this to women and men. My smile advice isn't just for women. Neither sex is as decorative without a beautiful smile. I've read studies that say women are more attracted to men who do not smile, but I call nonsense. I personally love to see a man smile. I think them derisive and self-absorbed if they don't smile. I can see that a young woman lacking self-esteem might be attracted to men who don't smile because they need to feel dominated, controlled, one-down (you know, looking for that bad boy). But come on, you're 40 now and so over all that, right (a subject for another part in this series)?
So decorate yourself with a full-on-rearmost-molar-exposing smile and brighten someone else's day, who'll hopefully pay it forward with her (or his) own smile, and so on, and so on, until...drum roll please (ratta-tat-tat)...all chronic bitch faces become extinct. Smile! Be visible!
--Fortuitous Observer
Which of these women would you first notice in a crowd?
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