What I once associated with posing for a picture has recently turned into something I absolutely despise. I’m not talking about smiling itself; I’m talking about being told to smile.

Over the course of the past few years I’ve been commanded to smile more by classmates, acquaintances, co-workers, teachers and relatives. Every time, I’ve come out of the situation in a mountain of fury because all I was doing in those instances was being a person completing a task. It doesn’t matter if I loved or hated the task, or if it was a particularly engaging one. The point is that I was doing something, and someone thought it was a good time to comment on my appearance and tell me what to do with my own body. 

Before delving into the misogyny of this phrase, I want to take a second to talk about it from a practical standpoint. If someone is working on something, they will not be smiling; their face will be in a resting position, probably like yours is right now as you read this, because there is no actual reason to smile. 

But the truth is that it isn’t just a mere “someone” being told to smile more — the vast majority of the time it’s a woman being ordered to by a man. 

On a surface level, telling women to smile more may seem harmless but, in actuality, the practice is incredibly misogynistic because it reflects a societal expectation that women should prioritize being pleasant and accommodating to convenience others at the expense of their own autonomy. This microaggression is deeply rooted in gender stereotypes that have persisted throughout history, dictating women to be cheerful and attractive, further perpetuating the notion that their primary value lies in shallow aspects like their appearance. In other words, telling women to smile more basically says a woman isn’t meant to be anything more than a pretty face — that our only purpose is to smile and nod and look pretty while the real leaders talk. 

By placing unreasonable value on women’s appearances, people negate our experiences and emotions. Telling us to smile more essentially implies that our emotions, and our right to express our emotions as we wish, are secondary to the comfort and satisfaction of others — particularly those in positions of authority, which in most cases tends to involve men. It isn’t just the fact that about 72% of men hold most leadership and C-suite positions (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2021), but also that some men genuinely believe women are inherently inferior to them just by the virtue of their sex. Just take a look at misogynistic social media influencer Andrew Tate who once very blatantly said “the women belong to the man.” Also see former President Donald Trump who, like Tate, is associated with a slew of misogynistic quotes and actions like when he called Washington Post editor Karen Attiah “beautiful” after she asked him a policy question at an editorial board meeting in 2016. 

Behavior like this essentially ends up sending the message that it’s OK for people to comment on women’s appearances — that our looks trump our intellect — and by extension, increases the subtle forms of sexism women are subjected to in our everyday interactions. Telling women to smile more objectifies and invalidates us as people trying to accomplish things based on our merit, further reinforcing the narrative that our worth is contingent upon our outward appearance — which we should also be expected to change at the command of men to help them feel more comfortable. 

After all, when was the last time someone told a man to smile more?