Faking Smiles

Antithethical to authenticity is the perpetual smile. 

Whether an ancient idea of self-actualization or evocative of new-age “enlightened” mumbo jumbo, the idea of authenticity, of being our most authentic selves, has endured. Every day in my journey through the internet, I’ll come across posts on Pinterest or Instagram encouraging us to find and live our most authentic truth. It is, I understand, a pathway to an ideal life, and nowhere has this idea been more powerful than in the realm of relationships where the notion of authenticity lies at the foundation of good, happy, and enduring human interaction. Not just for romantic endeavours, authenticity, ideally, is the bedrock of all kinds of relationships.  The trouble is, too many of us wear masks that prevent our truest selves from simply being, let alone being witnessed by anyone else.

Again, I harken back to a decade-and-a half-old relationship which, by all accounts, was (and is) an enduring one. So much of it worked well, so well, in fact, that for years it was impossible to find within it a fissure. But how many years of that, I wonder in retrospect, had I walked on eggshells? How many years of that had I simply just masked my disappointment because to reveal hurt or frustration would have hurt someone else, namely the partner I loved? In moments of desperation and sheer exhaustion, I’d yell my anger only to be met most frequently with bewilderment. “I didn’t know you felt like that,” he said. All along I thought I’d been a communicator par excellence. Had I masked the truth of my pain too effectively? Seemingly so.

As I moved through grad school similar sorts of comments had plagued my experience. “You always have a smile on your face,” I was told by one supervisor. “It’s hard to think you’re struggling when you always look pleasant.” (The lack of my visible struggle would mean none but my closest friends took seriously my cries for help…)

PEOPLE PLEASING

Where had this come from, this desire to people please in such a way?  Why had it become the foundation of my existence? What damage was I inflicting upon myself in the process of attempting to appear perpetually happy or, at very least, not unhappy?

Feminism would argue that women, millennia over, have been told that they should always be smiling. There are ways of being, in professional environments as elsewhere, that police female bodies in insidious ways. Female professors, for instance, are critiqued for their classroom behaviour. This is based, in part, on their ability to appear approachable which includes the degree to which one smiles.   Pleasantry and passivity are traits we still ascribe to idealized women, lest they wish to appear as demanding shrews or unrelenting harpies in either the workplace or at home. Or so say the men in our lives.

I am a Daddy’s girl at heart and the eldest granddaughter of a wonderfully doting man. My dad has always followed the path of least resistance, preferring emotional upheaval to be kept at bay. My grandfather, bless his departed soul, had always imparted one piece of recurring wisdom on his five granddaughters: “Always have a smile on your face.” In both cases, the “female” penchant for emotional turmoil was, and is, a huge turn-off.

And yet, this seemingly well-intentioned advice may well be our downfall.

Because at the very core of this, born of a desire to be everything like the father I so admire, who, even now in reluctantly providing relationship advice has told me to be pleasant and relaxed about everything, is a lack of authenticity. Born from this is fear, fear of how others will perceive me if I appear fragile, fear of what others will think if I request for myself anything other than the bare minimum.

Perhaps most damaging of all is that to mask from others your pain, hurt, frustration causes within us such turmoil that it chips away at our truest selves, leaving us broken and unsure. To mask any part of ourselves, whether tumultuous, exuberant, in pain, or in love, is to steal from us the very heart of who we are.

But it doesn’t have to be this way…

(Part 2:  In Progress).