I didn't smile till I was 17

That's obviously a lie (see baby picture), but smiling is now a habit I formed at 17. I never thought I was frowning, or scowling or something, but my face as relaxed looked... unhappy? intimidating? pissed? stoic? I'm not sure. People were always telling me to smile. It's still a phrase that pisses me off, with the ineffective comeback of "you fucking smile".

Eventually I realized that if I was going ot be fitting into this world, this 'christian, white supremacist, capitalist, patriarchy' (thanks bell hooks) world that we all live in, I was going to have to smile.

And let me tell you, it works. People still say stupid shit to me, you can't really help that, I suppose I say stupid shit to people as well, but fucking smiling puts people at such ease. Even when you are insulting them.

Now, is this some sort of betrayal? Am I abusing/using my status as 'female' and 'pretty' by manipulating people? Oftentimes I'm seen as being flirty when I'm, just being friendly. Eye contact and a smile are now one of my ways of acknowledging people, this does not mean I want to jumps your bones, or lady wood.

I guess smiling is just a societally accepted and expected mannerism for women to have. I was treated as strange without this mannerism, I adopted it and became more acceptable. Is this a betrayal of myself? Of other non-smiley women? Is this the same type of betrayal as my calling myself 'Jane' and not dealing with the strange reception of my legal name?

What other ways have I changed myself to make myself more socially acceptable? We all do it, we need to fit in and make everything work, 'get 'er done' and all. I just seem to be more acutely aware of what parts of myself I seem to be giving up in order to fit into this crappy christian, white supremacist, capitalist, patriarchal society that we all live in.

It's not acceptable to be sad, emotional at all really, to be late, to daydream, to be alone, to not want money, to not want objects, to not want status, to stand out in unaccepted ways; if you must be different be quiet about it. the specifics of acceptability vary through different communities with the mainstream American one not accepting variations in gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, outside of their proscribed boxes. One way of combating this is to keep pushing at the edges of the boxes and expanding them. The box for black people was expanded to include athletic ability, then musical ability, orating ability, and soon political ability, but the boxes don't seem to be disappearing. The box for gay people was expanded through the show "Queer Eye" and other TV shows, it's been said our brains need these boxes to make sense of informational input. And so, in order to be accepted you have to fit into whatever box people generally see you as fitting into.

Therefore, here I am at 25 having a bad day at a job I was hired for because of my smileyness. what effect does it have on my psyche to now be smiling when I was to glare at all the people? I don't even want to read the study on airline stewardess (that's not the article I was thinking of, it was all I could find quickly, like I said I don't think I want to read it right now).

But ok, whatever, if everyone else it doing it I might as well hop on in, kind of like a zombie attack, it's just so much easier to be one of them than to constantly battle the hordes of the undead. After all, once you are one of them they no longer try to eat your brains.