Smile more: how society raised me to be nicer than I really am.
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| lessons on how to smile more |
I don't think necessarily that I have the most inviting face. My resting face is really just uninterested in anything that anyone has to say, ever. But that's just my face. And I don't walk around just smiling either, nor do I sit around smiling. I really just don't go around smiling out of the blue, but people seem to think it their responsibility to teach me how to smile more, these people are often strangers, and they have always been men. I've started responding with glares or eye rolls, but it hasn't always been that way. I used to smile from ear to ear, giggle a little and assure them that I was a very happy person like it was actually any of their business.
A while back, one of my friends and I were reliving our experiences with unwanted advances, laughing off our frustrations, but it highlighted something important. It dawned on us that despite all the advice we had ever given, ever, to each other or any other female friend - literally ever - about being honest and assertive in rejecting men, women are not often taught abut assertiveness. I decided to write this after seeing a tweet yesterday about how we teach girls to be humble to the point of silence. Though the context she was talking about is different, it says so much about the behaviors we've come to affiliate with womanhood and femininity.
In listing a few of the things that women ought to be:
In listing a few of the things that women ought to be:
- nice
- passive
- agreeable
- chaste
- not too proud (humble is not the appropriate term here.)
Niceness is not a virtue; it has only helped to dig me further into holes that I should not have been in to begin with just to cater to the male ego, because, clearly, that is more important than my own comfort. I've been in places where I had to say "I have a boyfriend" even though it wasn't necessarily true just to get someone to leave me alone because the notion of my belonging - I hope you sense the eye roll here - to somebody is much easier for the male ego to swallow than a "no". In the instances that I did say no when I felt like taking my feminism out of its academic confines, they ended up keeping me there for a long time. My "no"s have come to mean "convince, pressure and/or guilt-trip me" into changing my mind. Two weeks ago a random man followed and stopped me as I was minding my business and used the "friends always start out as strangers" for ten minutes like, surely, I couldn't have meant it when I rejected him.
Also, I don't appreciate being told to relax and chill out when I retort to someone's seemingly harmless suggestions on how I ought to behave because "guys will feel like you want to dominate". As if I'm supposed to be okay with being defined by what men would want of me. Because my existence is only to satisfy male desires. Because I am not a person with a personality and my only goal in life is to be desired by a man.
Do not ask me to be okay with this kind of narrative and do not ask me to quiet myself on issues that concern me, like my behavior. And while we're all here, let's just point out the fact that we talk about human relations in terms of power. Terms like dominate imply subordination, passiveness and malleability. Gender expectations are controlling, an assertive woman is a deviant; these binaries that has dictated most of our lives only serve to uphold the patriarchy and excuse men for their toxic behaviour in trying to subordinate women and others identifying as lgbtq. "Men are trash" is about so much more than just petty relationship issues, toxic masculinity kills. By this I mean that I've come to expect aggressive reactions when I reject advances. So not only is there the issue of likeability but women are also taught to worry about potential verbal and sometimes even physical aggression. The discourse never fails to demonize women that "nobody wants anyway" or are "bossy bitch witches", so the pressure for conformity into gender roles and behaviors is real, and reproduced in sexist structures and social relations.
An assertive woman is a bitchy woman and, as painful as it is to admit to myself as a self-proclaimed fire-breathing feminist, I've internalized this even though I learned of womanhood from my boss ass woman - not bitch, I said woman - of a mother. She has been breaking glass ceilings for as long as I can remember in the male dominated environment that she works in. It's not always easy. Having to work twice as hard to get half the respect of a man in an office is a joke, add the fact that she is a black woman are we fall into a whole other dimension of constraint.
Also, I don't appreciate being told to relax and chill out when I retort to someone's seemingly harmless suggestions on how I ought to behave because "guys will feel like you want to dominate". As if I'm supposed to be okay with being defined by what men would want of me. Because my existence is only to satisfy male desires. Because I am not a person with a personality and my only goal in life is to be desired by a man.
Do not ask me to be okay with this kind of narrative and do not ask me to quiet myself on issues that concern me, like my behavior. And while we're all here, let's just point out the fact that we talk about human relations in terms of power. Terms like dominate imply subordination, passiveness and malleability. Gender expectations are controlling, an assertive woman is a deviant; these binaries that has dictated most of our lives only serve to uphold the patriarchy and excuse men for their toxic behaviour in trying to subordinate women and others identifying as lgbtq. "Men are trash" is about so much more than just petty relationship issues, toxic masculinity kills. By this I mean that I've come to expect aggressive reactions when I reject advances. So not only is there the issue of likeability but women are also taught to worry about potential verbal and sometimes even physical aggression. The discourse never fails to demonize women that "nobody wants anyway" or are "bossy bitch witches", so the pressure for conformity into gender roles and behaviors is real, and reproduced in sexist structures and social relations.
An assertive woman is a bitchy woman and, as painful as it is to admit to myself as a self-proclaimed fire-breathing feminist, I've internalized this even though I learned of womanhood from my boss ass woman - not bitch, I said woman - of a mother. She has been breaking glass ceilings for as long as I can remember in the male dominated environment that she works in. It's not always easy. Having to work twice as hard to get half the respect of a man in an office is a joke, add the fact that she is a black woman are we fall into a whole other dimension of constraint.
Niceness is not a virtue, and my recommendation is to unlearn it, for your own wellbeing because you gotta take care of numba wun, and that is always you.
What I am relearning instead is that I don't owe anyone anything, not my time, not my niceness so I will take my own advice, and people will need to deal with it. This propensity for people pleasing is not inherent to womanhood, I know that. Now I'm just trying to internalize a new lesson before the closing of the year to carry with me forever, I'm done being nice and compromising myself for the male ego. I will no longer shrink myself, I will take up all of the space.
I'm not saying anything new here, I'm sure there are many articles on this and I've put in a link to an uber relatable video (check it out, seriously), but I felt I needed to write this to relieve my outrage at male entitlement. I find it everywhere, in the classroom, in the club and even just walking home, minding my business. In fact, I'm so outraged that I wrote a poem about it, let me know your thoughts about the article and the poem via private message or in the comments:
Strange intentions // the violence of men
29/11/17
Have you ever been hugged by a stranger before
One with permission
The other
Follows you up the street
Minds you minding your business
Interjects his own
Says 'I want to get to know you'
Looks you up and down
Makes you feel undressed and says
'I saw you walking by and thought we could spark a friendship'
Winks and smiles
Expects a smile back
To confirm the flirtation
He got me wondering about intentions
Got me clenching my thighs together
Cause my body never mentioned self-defense
So my common sense presents my options
1. Is run.
2. Is cuss him the fuck out for following me
I go with
3. Cause maybe if I'm friendly enough to shelter his ego he'll finally leave me alone
I wonder
How many less girls made it home last night
How many more girls were forced into a fight
With threats of smile more, presented like compliments
Say
"You look more beautiful that way"
Say "i know it made you feel some typa way"
Say I'll pressure you into doing things my way
But shit
I'm overthinking his intentions now
Cause I made it home safe that day
He spared me from his mistakes
That day
But chasing me up streets stops being okay
Today.
It's fucked up that chasing away strangers
Doesn't make the strange men go away
And now I have to feel guilty
For not wanting to play his game.
For not wanting to know his name
For thinking that this day would see this body be erased.
I've been gaslighting myself for years now.
Convince myself there was really nothing to fear
When
Men followed me around like they can't see
Why my security would feel threatened
By their leers
And their
Compliments full of violence
Tell myself it's flattery
Feel flattered
Tell myself
Let them teach me how to smile more
Smile like how they like to see me smiling
In their direction
Inviting them in
They just wanted to be friend
Why do I got to be
So damn intense
About strange men
All the time
Why do I got to be on defense
All the time.
Me and some women i know
we juggle our feminism
Like the earth juggles darkness and light
Cause it's dangerous being a feminist at night
So we just
Swallow back pride
Pull out teeth
And smile pretty
Like they been asking us to all along
And pray the sun doesn't take too long to rise again
Pray that you'll still be alive by then
And pray to God this body doesn't see
the violence of men
Turn into silent statistic
Speak out in shame
Speak out and be silenced again.
Unlearn smiling
Unlearn invitation
Internalize guilt
It's all on me
I acted too nice
He was entitled to my thighs
If this is the shit we're in for
I mean
Teaching women to be careful what they ask for
Then I will teach my daughter to remember not to smile more
But
Even mean mugs
Can't save us
Anymore
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