Just about everyone looks better when they smile. It’s true regardless of gender. I don’t see where sexism enters the equation.
I feel pretty oblivious. What am I missing?
I don’t know if it’s sexist but it sure as hell is annoying. Don’t tell people to smile if you don’t have a very good reason.
Because it’s sexist to ask me to look better for you
Fuck the downvotes. This is no stupid questions!
Its considered rude towards women. Because a lot of men just say it to women to look more attractive or to just looke more nice as if women bare the responsibility to be nice to men or always be attractive otherwise they wont be considered women at all. I think it became like because many men just say it a lot (or many boomers dont know).
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It’s considered rude.
As a girl, my job isn’t to look attractive to guys. I smile when I feel like it, which happens a lot because I’m happy, but I’d still consider it rude if anyone told me to smile like it was an order. If you’re a guy and you wouldn’t tell other guys to smile in the same context, then that falls under discrimination based on sex.
It’s not women’s job to be attractive.
They aren’t there for your viewing pleasure.
They’re not for you; they’re not a public amenity.
You have no more right to expect them to smile in order to make your surroundings more aesthetic than you have a right to expect them to get their tits out for you to gawp at.
Ah I see!
So you’re essentially saying that instead of asking women to smile, I should also ask them to get their tits out for me to gawp at!
Thank you :)
Because men are “allowed” to look however they want, grouchy, happy or ‘keep the fuck away from me’. If a women does it she’s got “resting bitch face” or gets told to smile. It’s just a subtle way of saying “you don’t look right here let me change you”. If you kept saying it to guys they’d tell you to fuck off.
“you don’t look right here let me change you”
That’s pretty fucking rude. I am continually amazed by how much women are expected to tolerate.
Yes, it is rude.
Tell us a story of the last time you witnessed someone telling a man to smile because he would look so much better if he did.
I can’t, either. That’s why.
Well people have frequently mistaken me for a woman most of my life and thats happened to me a few times. Its intrusive and irritating to be told I should look a certain way, especially by a stranger and I would consider it rude to say to anyone unsolicited.
Thats not to say its not worse for women having to deal with the objectification layer, too.
Nobody asked Luigi to smile, he just did…
Gigachad Sigma Grindset 😎
I agree with the sentiment, but I, a man, actually have customers tell me to smile more weirdly often working retail.
And they say it’s because “you’re prettier when you smile” or something like that?
That’s one exception that doesn’t surprise me. Do you have any sense of how often they are doing this with intentional irony compared to with genuine obliviousness?
It’s really only creepy old dudes I get it from. It seems pretty genuine most of the time. These comments are more frequent and more egregious with my women coworkers, though, as one might expect.
How interesting! That makes it even less surprising.
People have told me, it’s how I’ve seen friends and family go trough dating profiles, and weirdly enough I once saw a researcher use a lot of tech and data just to conclude the journalist should smile more
I’m enjoying being told about these counterexamples, as I’m seeing even more clearly how this attitude is embedded in our shared culture.
So far, all the specific contexts people have mentioned to me in which men are being told to smile is one in which others feel entitled to the man attempting to impress them. In contexts such as dating or performing on video or working in retail, this doesn’t particularly surprise me.
I suppose another reasonable context is one in which the people asking you to smile are genuinely worried about your emotional state and want you to seem happier. By chance is it typically like that for you? (Let’s set aside for now the complex matter of whether they actually want you to feel better or they merely want to control your behavior or feel less uncomfortable themselves.)
That has happened, yes. Not as often anymore though, but to be fair, I already smile a lot nowadays
Good point.
I can tell you 100 stories of telling a man to eat more so that they wouldn’t be so skinny.
I mean we have countless Reddit stories where someone’s dog or grandma died that day, and while groceries shopping someone tells them “hey, a beautiful girl like you should smile”.
That’s just an a**hole move. You don’t know anything about that person. Maybe they’re not smiling for a reason. I’d say it is very likely that this might be the case… Otherwise they’d probably already smile… And people keep forcing themselves on other people and telling them what to do. Like smile. When it’s really none of their business and very intrusive.
Leave them be. Everyone is entitled to feel. Sometimes people are happy and sometimes they’re not. It’s not however their job to smile for you.
And if it’s a medical condition or they were born with what people call a “resting bitch face”… You’re just rubbing it in and be the 500th person who did a negative comment on their looks.
It’s sexist because you wouldn’t risk asking a man to smile. It’s disrespectful because you don’t get to control another person’s facial expressions. It’s intrusive because you disrupt another person’s thoughts with your selfishness. You aren’t the centre of the world. Other people get to have their own feelings and since women are people that includes them.
This is the best answer I’ve seen so far. Thank you!
This is correct. The rule is, ‘anything you say to a woman must apply equally to a man’, if not, don’t say it. Try saying “hey, nice tits dude” and see how that works out.
It’s a risk telling a man to smile?
Oh yeah.
Honestly, it’s risky with women too, just not as risky.
I know women that will pull a knife on you for giving them an order like that. And I know a shit ton of men that will go straight to punching that kind of fool in the face. Women aren’t as likely to get violent, but when they do, they don’t fuck around because it’s usually men saying that kind of condescending shit.
But, yeah, I’ve seen fights started over even less rude things. Some guys, you don’t give an order to, period, no matter how nice you do it, or how you intend it.
Tbh, I’m not going to respond well to it, though I’ll give a person the chance to GTFO before I step to violence. It’s an option if they don’t fuck off though.
Holy pizza, you live in a place where people just carry knives in public?! I think this might also just be different for different places. Or is it something else that makes this difference?
Well, it’s perfectly legal here, though there’s places you can’t take a knife inside with you.
But, yeah, plenty of people do.
For one, we’re pretty rural and a good knife is a necessity. It’s the most versatile tool on the planet. Then, we’ve got a fairly difficult problem of feral dogs, and not everyone can/will carry a gun for that risk. Not that a knife is a great idea against a dog attack, but it’s better than nothing I guess. And there are people that carry them specifically as a weapon, with the other factors being less important.
There’s this one lady, shes in her seventies now, and carries a buck 119 on her hip everywhere, even church. Has done so since I was a kid at least. She’s one of those tough as hell farm ladies.
Women in particular end up very worried about being victimized just because it’s statistically a huge risk. So they want something to equalize their chances, even a little. I can’t say a knife is the best choice for that, especially without training, but knives scare people, so they think they’re a magic wand you wave around and bad things go away.
When you add in the women and girls that are engaged in activities that up their chances of being victimized, that are also not going to realistically carry pepper spray or a gun, the percentage gets a big bump. There’s a little section just outside of town that’s essentially a meth driven community. There’s nobody there unarmed entirely because meth heads are fucking crazy.
It might be surprising, but some folks carry multiple knives. Typically that’s going to be because they have specific tasks that are better suited to a given type of knife. Best example of that is a guy I know that keeps animals, livestock. He keeps one knife that’s just for cutting twine and other rope/string. A folding hawkbill, or a carpet knife depending on what he grabs first. But he also has a pocket knife for whittling and a general purpose folding knife for general use.
I carry two myself. One bigger one for general tasks, one smaller one with a blade that’s half serrated for specific jobs that are better suited to a serrated edge. Use both of them multiple times a day. And they go everywhere with me that it’s legal to do so. They’re just too damn useful to leave at home.
I carry a ratcheting screwdriver with 12 bits, and a phone. Tools are handy almost every day! It would appear like a knife comes in handy a lot more often than a screwdriver where you are
Oh, heck yeah! Having critters to take care of makes having a knife on you pretty much mandatory. My pocket tools I maybe use once a week, but just with our chickens and doing all the little stuff tending to them, I’ll use a knife at least daily, and that’s just for them.
Eyy chickens are cool! It’s really interesting how different perspectives can be in different places
/c/NoStupidQuestions
Asks a “stupid” question
-22
Wow, you really played yourself didn’t you, OP?
Seriously, wtf is even the point of this subreddit at this rate?
Some people on Lemmy act all high and mighty while considering themselves as “different” from all the regular social media normies owned by corpos. But they’re still the same here as well. Just a different coat of paint.
And I’m not even just referring to this post or even this community or instance. They are all just as retarded and lack any self awareness as much as all the other people online.
It’s the same as when people on Reddit act superior and different, because they don’t have their real names on the account compared to Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, ext.
You know the “It’s not the same social media, we are different” that is popular both here and there and most other places to be honest.
Why is how good a woman looks to you more important than her own feelings?
Why are you turning this into a personal attack? Asking women to smile is not something I do.
Just about everyone looks better when they smile.
You’re the one who brought looks into it.
It’s not sexist, it’s threatening.
While you may mean well, the vast majority of times a woman is complemented by an acquaintance or stranger, it’s because that person is trying to hit on the woman.
You might think “shouldn’t that be flattering?” No, it really isn’t. Every single woman I know has countless stories about how they have been harassed by desperate men trying to get into their pants. If you could barely walk into a public place without random strangers harassing you, you’d be soured on the idea too. To further compound the problem, men are on average bigger, stronger, and more aggressive than women.
So as an example, I was out with my girlfriend once, walking down a crowded street. There was a group of people we had to walk around so we went single file. In less than 30 seconds, she already had some shitty man cat calling her with loaded compliments. I shoved some people aside to make sure I was standing next to her again and he shut up immediately. This is just a fact of life for most women.
Men may not understand this because they only very rarely receive random compliments, but it hits very different as a woman.
There is an appropriate time to compliment women, and it’s after you have already built up a trusting friendship. Besides, a compliment means more coming from a friend than a stranger.
I constantly have to remind myself that I can be perceived as “threatening”, because I’m typically not threatening at all. Having some empathy is a good start, but there’s so much I don’t know about what women deal with on a daily basis.
“dangerous by default” because you are a man and just as disposable; ain’t the patriarchy swell?
Context matters:
Taking a group photo? Stock photo models? PR? Greeter? - yes, asking someone to smile for a goal is fine
Someone just minding their own business - no, asking them to smile is selfish and just for your personal satisfaction. People don’t need to justify to you why they don’t feel like smiling. It’s rude to demand it of others
Greeter? you think the people at walmart want to be there? 60+ and the best job they find is minimum wage and standing on their feet all day getting ignored by people mostly so other employees don’t walk out the front with loot?
I think it’s because they usually mean “Shut up, I don’t care what you’re thinking about, just be pretty.”
That feels depressingly accurate. Ick.
“Your emotional and mental reality is less important than my physical appreciation/judgement of you.”
The problem lies in wanting women to look better in the first place.
Not an issue for men?
Not as much as “needing to toughen up”.
Oof “pretend your feelings don’t exist” is not a good idea. But yep, just like “man up” it’s horrid advice.
