I AM Smiling

The struggle is real. If you’re afflicted too, you know. You get it. If you’re an outsider looking in, then all you see is a bitch face.

Close. But the term you’re looking for is Resting Bitch Face, or RBF for short.

Don’t assume you can read body language without a baseline of how one normally looks or behaves. You’re missing out on a lot of fun people by incorrectly reading them.

Let me give you an example. What do you see here?

Sad? Mad? Bored? Angry? Unapproachable?

Nope. Wrong.

I’m not at all upset. On the contrary I am smiling in this pic.

I made a conscious effort to make my “eyes smile” and my face jovial and uplifting. I thought of something funny.

I have Resting Bitch Face.

Now look again; I AM smiling.

1. My eyebrows are not together or down (reliable muscles for anger).
2. The tops of my lips are turned up, however slight they may be.
3. And you also see the outer lines on each side of my lips facing downward that are simply part of my face.

If I try to smile with my teeth, it often looks like a Sheldon Cooper moment:

As for me, I probably look mean when you first meet me. But when you get to know me you see that I’m even meaner. 🙂

How about this? Is this better? I can try resting with this face so as not to be misjudged.

The next time you decide that you have someone figured out merely by how they look either in person or just a photo, first consider maybe they’re not all that bad and just have RBF.

p.s. The explanation for a few of my other pics you may find on this site that actually show a beautiful smile, it’s called an amazing professional photographer (Thanks Elise!) and far, far more takes than I care to admit to get a few good ones.