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I think it's rude to tell someone to smile, whether they're a man or a woman. The thing is, though, women hear it from men way more often than the reverse. Men telling women this gives us the impression that it's only acceptable for a woman to be happy and hospitable all the time, as if we're here just for their amusement and pleasure. I think we're more sensitive to it because we (or at least I) interpret it as a way a man tries to make a woman more vulnerable and dainty.
Probably resting ahole face. I've been told that I look like (and act like) an ahole.
It's American culture - the culture of asinine jejune smiling. Americans even smile on their passport photos!
I've been told - in a solicitous and helpful way - that I perpetually carry the morose expression of a suicidal jihadi, or of an SS-man. One time I turned this handicap into an advantage. Our local atheist meetup group was having a Sunday lunch at a local restaurant. We were placed adjacent to another group of diners, evidently freshly out of a church-service. Our conversation was, as often happens in atheist circles, on theological matters. When lunch concluded, I returned to the table to leave a tip, and a fellow from the Christian table accosted me, with protestations that I have it all wrong. I leveled my stare at him, and icily pronounced: "Be wary of where you pry, and how; for you may regard yourself to be protected by the blood, but I shall never rest and never tire". It was amusing (but I did not smile) to watch the color drain from his face.
Smiling is yet another subset of the passel of happy-feeling traits that modern first-world people consider to be core to romantic relationship. It's just another reason to wonder whether the world has gone insane.
It also offends me that it seems to be okay for women to be offended by this, but not men.
It's got nothing to do with gender. The context is totally different, and they aren't the same thing at all.
Online dating is dependent on photos, and if you don't include a photo of yourself smiling, people are left to either 1) draw their own conclusions, or 2) ask you about it.
It also offends me that it seems to be okay for women to be offended by this, but not men.
Yeah, sure you're offended.
Asking "why no smile?" - which is a question, not an order is light years away from a random guy barking "Smile!!!!1!!!" at a woman he has never met. Light years.
And in online pictures, people should smile - the serious face, dead stare into the camera look is off-putting to many. You don't look tough, you look like a potential stalker.
Asking "why no smile?" - which is a question, not an order is light years away from a random guy barking "Smile!!!!1!!!" at a woman he has never met. Light years.
Location: Huntersville/Charlotte, NC and Washington, DC
26,700 posts, read 41,748,461 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by MoonBeam33
Yeah, sure you're offended.
Asking "why no smile?" - which is a question, not an order is light years away from a random guy barking "Smile!!!!1!!!" at a woman he has never met. Light years.
And in online pictures, people should smile - the serious face, dead stare into the camera look is off-putting to many. You don't look tough, you look like a potential stalker.
They are not different. In either case, the person is being robbed of their right to determine their own emotions. I don't smile in most of my online photos because that is how I am in real life, I rarely smile typically since my smile looks stupid and I look like an idiot when I smile.
Just got this message in my POF box. Would any woman be offended by this?
Mod cut: Image deleted (contained OLD username and photo). The message said she liked this OP's photo but asked "Why no smile?
Only when they suggest maybe I have autism.
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