{"id":17212,"date":"2019-02-20T09:00:25","date_gmt":"2019-02-20T17:00:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/?p=17212"},"modified":"2019-02-18T11:53:32","modified_gmt":"2019-02-18T19:53:32","slug":"lets-talk-smile","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/2019\/02\/20\/lets-talk-smile\/","title":{"rendered":"Let’s Talk<\/em>: Smile"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I recently discovered a book that gives suggestions for 365 days of social media prompts. I opened the book and flipped to an arbitrary day: February 13. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

On this page, the suggested post was something acknowledging that women smile 62 times a day while men only smile eight. It then went on to remind men to buy their partners flowers for Valentine\u2019s the next day to help the women meet their quota.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m actually surprised it didn\u2019t suggest adding a photo of me smiling over a bouquet of flowers. I scoffed, ranted, and swiftly shoved said book in my desk drawer\u2014I would have binned it, but, alas, it wasn\u2019t mine to destroy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a>
Let’s Talk?<\/em> is a column exploring women’s rights issues; it’s in every issue of Nexus<\/em>.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Needless to say, I am not a fan of this book, nor will I be following its prompt. If anything, it makes me want to take a selfie highlighting the fact that I suffer from a syndrome commonly known as resting bitch face (RBF).  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

My RBF is the result of eye strain brought on from staring at a computer screen too much, giving me this awesome line between my eyebrows that a former (male) co-worker once suggested I remedy with Botox. But this isn\u2019t about my RBF\u2014although henceforth, I shall reclaim it as RESOLMTFAF (resting eye strain overworked leave me the fuck alone face); it\u2019s about the disturbing idea that society is more concerned about men buying minimal-effort shit to make women smile than the fact that they smile an average of 7.75 times less.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Continuing down that rabbit hole, if I already smile 7.75 times more than men, why do I get reminded\u2014by men\u2014on a regular basis to smile? I mean, I\u2019m not going to say this is another example of the patriarchy demanding women work harder for less payoff, but I don\u2019t see a lot of Botox commercials directed toward men to rid them of their smile lines (although maybe I would if they upped their own quota).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The disturbing fact is this: men don\u2019t smile even a fraction as much as women do. Does that mean they don\u2019t feel joy on the same level as us? If so, has society shamed them into feeling they can\u2019t express it, or are women just expected to slap on a Cheshire-cat grin and fake it? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Either way, I decided to rewrite the social media post: Everyone stop and smell the roses. It just might make you smile. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I recently discovered a book that gives suggestions for 365 days of social media prompts. I opened the book and flipped to an arbitrary day: February 13.  On this page, the suggested post was something acknowledging that women smile 62 times a day while men only smile eight. It then went on to remind men […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":15677,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,227],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17212","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-columns","category-february-20-2019"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17212","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17212"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17212\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17213,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17212\/revisions\/17213"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15677"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17212"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17212"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17212"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}