A reader writes: “I’m in the very early stages of female-to-male transition and wonder if smiling should be among the mannerisms I’m trying to change. I know that many men smile. For me smiling didn’t come naturally, however, and because of certain circumstances, I associate it with femininity and internalized transphobia.
“When I was a teenager my transphobic mother was disturbed by my masculine appearance, and kept telling me to ‘smile more.’ My father asked, ‘Couldn’t you have smiled?’ when he saw a photo of me. Strangers complimented me when I happened to smile. When I taught a class, a mentoring professor urged me to smile to my students. As a result of all this I did finally acquire the habit of smiling, but it was always linked to a sense that I was unacceptable as my serious self.
“If I teach myself to smile less, I may appear hostile and negative, which I do not want. On the other hand, I do not want my acquired ‘feminine’ smiling to ruin the rest of the male comportment I’m aiming for. Is there a middle ground, a recognizably male way of smiling?”
I have always thought that men smile less than women do, at least in Western culture, which is the culture with which I am most familiar, and I always thought that it had something to do with socialization.
I thought that men were taught to smile less because it was more important for them to appear serious in business (and in war), and that smiling would reduce their chances of being seen as tough competitors – in business, in war, for territory, and for a mate.
On the other hand, a smiling woman reflects her socially sanctioned role as caregiver – someone who can be approached and who will be helpful, friendly, and caring.
But I never bothered to look it up, and it appears that I might be wrong – at least in part.
A Yale University study found that women do smile more than men in general, but there are many variables. According to this study, women and men in the same position of power smile about the same amount. Men smile less than women do when they think they are being observed – apparently because they are trying to act out an expected gender role of not smiling.
And culture, age, ethnicity, and several other factors play a part in any differences between smiling men and smiling women. This study would indicate that to smile or not to smile in certain situations is completely a social construct.
However, an article published in the academic journal Physiology & Behavior hypothesizes that smiling is biology based and has to do with testosterone evolving to alter brain function to inhibit smiling. The reason for this genetic evolution has to do with males needing to intimidate rivals in order to effectively compete for mates.
If this theory is true, then I was right in my assumption that smiling was a detriment to competition, but I was wrong in assuming that it was social – according to this theory, smiling or not smiling would be hardwired.
There are probably dozens of other studies out there, offering completely opposing views on any smile phenomenon. But regardless of these studies, I think that it is assumed by many in Western culture that men smile much less than women, and my personal experience has borne this out.
I’m a smiler, even when I don’t feel like smiling. As a female, I was socialized to please, and I believe that smiling is a big part of that. I have a tendency to smile at everyone, even strangers I pass on the street or who I run into in public restrooms.
But when I transitioned, I quickly learned that men don’t smile when passing each other on the street – if they acknowledge each other at all, it tends to be with a little head jerk that I still haven’t perfected after fourteen years. I also learned that they definitely do not smile at each other in public restrooms, and that unless you’re feeling especially frisky or in the mood to get beat up, it’s probably unwise to do so.
The thing that I have noticed about men and women smiling (and my disclaimer is that this is strictly personal observation, backed by no research, and a generalization to boot) is that men tend to smile for a reason, whereas women tend to smile both for a reason and in general – just to be pleasant.
Regardless of any personal observations or research studies, if you’re a smiler, you should smile. If you’re not, don’t worry about it. Smile when you feel like smiling, and don’t when you don’t. There is a difference between a non-smile and a frown. Frowns and glares can appear hostile and negative. Relaxed, open, neutral faces appear as just that – neutral.
I don’t think that a smile is going to damage a masculine persona. People will think you’re a happy guy, and happy guys are attractive. There are certain social situations, such as meeting someone new or greeting people at a party, where smiling is mandatory. Other than that, a sincere smile is the best kind.
So I say smile when you mean it – except in the public men’s room.
What do readers think?
Dear reader….. Please don’t give up your smile.
“if you’re a smiler, you should smile. If you’re not, don’t worry about it. Smile when you feel like smiling, and don’t when you don’t…”
Matt, thanks for writing this; if only I had read this 3 years ago when I started to transition.
I was a natural smiler until I taught myself not to smile and now, two and a half years later, I am trying to smile more often. I typically fail miserably and the smile looks like a frown or worse doesn’t show up at all. I now have lines in my forehead from what I call “fretting” that never happened until I stopped smiling and tried to look more serious.
Now the head nod, I have down pat.
One of my rules for transitioning is to try out various behaviors, and keep the ones that feel natural. For me, sitting with my legs apart, rubbing my chin, walking like a man, and making less eye contact all feel natural. Not cuddling cute animals is decidedly unnatural, so I go ahead and risk my masculinity on that one.
I’d say, start smiling when it feels natural to smile, and don’t if it feels unnatural. One of my least favorite things when I was living as a female was when girls would look at me out of the blue and give me a smile, and I was expected to smile back. I knew they were only doing that because they saw me as a girl, I knew guys don’t do that, and I knew if I didn’t smile back they would think I’m a cold fish. It was a very unnatural smile for me, even though I was and am a fairly smiley person.
Well, that sure was an interesting question. I alway considered the head nod thing a “southern” thing as an acknowledgemennt of someone else nearby. I hadn’t thought of it as a male mannerism, but now that I think about it, I only do it around males. Same thing with smiling. I do that around a group of females as a way of greeting them. I thought of these mannerism as a “southern” thing because when I lived out west, it isn’t done as often. It actually took me awhile not to do it. My guess on all of it, is that it is both a biological and cultural phenomenon and just observe what others do in any given situation and copy it.
Several thoughts:
I don’t believe that men smile less because of their biology (i.e., testosterone); I think it’s due to their culture, upbringing, etc. I’ve met plenty of smiley guys.
While I was reading this, I remembered that James Bond’s villains tend to smile a lot while telling 007 just how they’re going to kill him – so definitely a smile can be as intimidating as a glare.
I agree with the “smile if you feel like smiling and don’t smile if you don’t feel it” philosophy. As a kid, I was forced to smile a lot when I didn’t feel it (you should see some of my defiantly-unsmiley youth pics), so I say go with what you feel.
I also have the head nod down now – mostly aimed at guys, but with women I sometimes still defalt to the tight-lipped, no-teeth smile I learned to do as a female.
I find this interesting and a little amusing. I transitioned in the opposite direction, and found it a struggle to replace the “head nod” thing with the smile thing. But as soon as I learned to do that I found that people of both sexes responded to me better.
I definitely believe that boys are trained not to smile during their upbringing. Very often it’s interpreted as either a sign of weakness or one of mockery. “What are you smiling about?!” was a challenge often directed at boys but rarely girls while I was growing up.
I’ve observed within our culture that, at least in the case of strangers, men are allowed (in the cultural sense of “allowed”) to smile at women, but generally not allowed to smile at other men. Women can smile at anyone, and in fact are often considered rude if they don’t.
Definitely some gender-specific culturally-expected behavior going on there.
Random thoughts on smiling:
- It likely IS sociologically/biologically connected. Smiling or grinning is often a sign of *submissive* behavior among various primates as well as some animals in the canine family. It’s an appeasing gesture that means “I mean you no harm” and comes from a type of submission or surrender. If you see a chimp or dog grinning, that’s what you’re seeing, and smiling at various animals doesn’t mean what a lot of people think it does.
If smiling or grinning is an appeasing and submissive gesture in the animal kingdom generally, I think that suggests that it’s not *just* learned gendered behavior, even if the reason girls and women are taught or expected to smile more is a cultural one in Western society.
- There is also some research suggesting that by exercising your smiling muscles (there are a lot of them), people can make themselves less depressed. Smiling more physically can actually signal your brain to *feel* happy (or release the appropriate chemical mix to help). Not smiling might actually make you more depressed. So deliberately not smiling might actually alter how your body releases hormones and how you actually feel.
- There does seem to be a big cultural difference in when it’s ok to smile and what that smile means (let alone the “how” of your smile). When you are being read as male in the United States, smiling at another person (who is a stranger) is often seen as interest of some sort. Smiling at women is often understood to mean that you are *interested*, not just that you are being friendly. Even moreso with smiling at men. And smiling at young children is often read as predatory, rather than friendly.
Whether your smile gets you read as male or female is not just about HOW you smile. It’s also about the context in which you are smiling.
Whether you should CHANGE how you are? Well, I’m of the opinion that you shouldn’t STOP smiling. But that you can play around withhow you smile (grin, full mouth, etc?) and be mindful of the “when” aspect, just to realize that you may send out some signals you don’t mean to.
Sean, I don’t know about the rest of the animal kingdom, but don’t smile at a gorilla unless you can outrun him – it’s definitely not a submissive gesture there.
I’ve also heard you should “never smile at a crocodile.”
re: smiling can help with depression
Wow. Maybe that’s why people are always so confused when I tell them I am depressed. They always say: “But you’re such a happy person!” or “But you always smile when I see you!”
Defense mechanism and a coping method with depression? Probably.
re: smiling at children
One of the few things I hate about being male-identified and subsequently, perceived as male, is that it’s considered less OK for men to smile or make faces at kids. It’s considered sketchy. Drives me nuts because I love kids!
I remember spending a lot of time lost in thought as a young teenage girl and having people ask me what was wrong or why I was so sad all the time. I was always confused by this; usually I was feeling fine, but wasn’t thinking about presenting as super-smiley when I was focused on something else. A lot of people seem to be really invested in encouraging women to smile all the time, regardless of the circumstances.
When I started transitioning, I didn’t really think about whether I should smile less or not. I was working a job where I had a lot of interaction with customers, so I had my customer service face on most of the time and of course that comes with a big smile. I did worry about a lot of my other mannerisms and body language habits, but smiling wasn’t on the list. I did start to feel less pressure from other people to smile, though.
I’ve learned in the past few years that I am a pretty smiley guy, and I don’t think that impacts how other people read me. It took me several years to settle into the body language and mannerisms that made sense to me as a guy, but I found that I did hold on to a lot of what I’d picked up earlier in my life. I think Matt’s advice of “smile if and when you want” is probably spot-on.
I don’t have the time to read all replies, but was it pointed out that gay men seem to smile a lot more? Way more natural and relaxed than straight men…
Young male children smile just as much as female children. Smiling is a sign that you feel well or like someone or something.
I find it interesting that “I don’t mean you harm” is interpretated as submissiveness. I assume some alpha males wrote those studies…
As someone who has (unfortunately in my case) lived as some kind of male for a prolonged period of my life… if you’re truly feeling it, please smile away and don’t let anyone make you feel self-conscious about it. I think it’s beautiful and sexy when I see men smile with authentic joy.
If, however, you’re smiling just to be harmless, cute and innocuous (AKA female socialization) then feel good that you’re finally getting a handle on that societally imposed bs. And remember, Europeans almost always say that ‘Americans smile all the time like idiots.’ I think there’s some truth in that.
as a cisgender female, i don’t know how much what i say will influence the transguy who asked this question, nor the other guys who already have or might respond. but here’s my 2 cents anyways.
i have alot of transguy friends and acquaintances, and while i haven’t specifically noticed when they smile or don’t smile, there is something i HAVE, upon reflection, noticed. one of my friends doesn’t smile very often, which can sometimes make it very difficult for me, as a woman, to be able to read his emotions. a different friend smiles all the time, which i find to be a very welcoming gesture. and, though this may or may not count, in comparison, my 21-year old cisgender brother smiles frequently. what i’m getting at, though, is that i think in many cases (except perhaps the occasional business meeting or other serious event), smiling (for men) can be an act of confidence – in that a man who is confident in himself and of his actions will smile instead of possibly grimacing which could indicate nervousness, displeasure (with what’s going on), or anger. i’m all for smiling (i smile alot), but again, to echo what matt and others have said, “smile if you feel like smiling, and don’t smile if you don’t feel like it.” if i ever pass you on the street, i will probably smile; and i hope that, whoever you are, you smile back.
thoughts on the confidence thing?
What a great thread.
I am not a smiley person but have learned to smile when I am certainly not happy. When I’m expected to humor old, presumably cis men into thinking they have just told their not-funny jokes to a young girl who isn’t going to disagree with their witty humor. And other such circumstances.
Not smiling as much, and smiling in different ways, and controlling the inflection of my voice were some of the first things I started changing. I am still working on it. When I get in girlish mode (of which smiling is a big part,) I don’t feel genuine at all. It feels like my body is on autopilot and the essence of who I am is displaced slightly; there, but not a participant. I know it is all learned behavior because it feels like learned behavior.
For me, it certainly has been a “I’m harmless, please don’t hurt me” thing, as well as a “Please don’t harass me for not being an appropriate girl” thing. That, combined with the way I used to look – explicitly female, though not sexy or beautiful, kept me shielded from most gender-policing but it was at a price to my self-expression.
Like accidentalbeard, I had people ask me the whole time I was a teenager why I seemed so “down.” Is it possible, if smiling is *in general* more “biological”/”hardwired” to femaleness and less to maleness, that this goes for trans people as well as cis people?
I work in retail, and so I have to look pleasant most of the time. I have given myself permission not to smile constantly, and I can tell from the feedback that people give me that I don’t seem overly cold or mean. I also allow myself my furrowed brow when I am focused on whatever task I’m doing, as I actually have to put effort into “relaxing” those muscles most of the time; effort that I could use to focus on what I’m doing instead.
I think there are many factors that go into smiling (and other facial expressions,) but gender is one of the main ones.
Smiles, ah so interesting. I too transitioned “the other way”. I find that I smile far more now than pretransition. I had assumed that this was simply because I was so much happier, but perhaps it is “learned” behavior which I somehow picked up. Whatever, the reason my perception is that people, men and women, seem to respond in a positive way.
Regarding the head nod thingy, as a cyclist, I constantly notice how men nod to me as we pass while I just smile and say hi.
To paraphrase Dr Suess “Be who you are and smile when you feel like it because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind.”
I have always been a big smiler. Considering that I am in the beginning stages of transition, I am acutely aware of smiling right now. I recently went to a party where several pictures of me were taken. In the majority of them I have a huge and genuine smile on my face. It made me look very female with all those oh so lovely dimples screaming out “pretty” or “beautiful” to me.
That got me to thinking that there was never going to be a point in my existence where I did not have those “oh so lovely” dimples that make my face more feminine. I would have to grow a full beard to hide those dimples (as in Grizzly Adams kind of beard). And although I am getting some facial hair, I will probably never have a raging full beard at any point in the remainder of my life. So hiding them is a moot point.
I decided some time ago that transition was not going to change who I really am inside. I am me, and me has a huge dimpled smile, acts a lot like a queenie gay man on occasion, doesn’t give a rat’s behind about what other people think, and generally speaking is an incredibly genuine, open person.
Considering my brothers all have dimples and they don’t appear female, somehow I think I’ll make it past this thinking I look too female when I smile. In the meantime I will not, and actually cannot stop smiling because that is who I am.
To me transitioning is about becoming your authentic self. If authentic to you is smiling, then by all means continue to smile. If it’s not being much of a smiler, then please continue on with being your authentic self. Because transitioning is in the end, all about being the real you.
Wow, this got some amazing responses! I’m really glad to hear from both women and men. I love reading about the whole submission/confidence thing, because I see some of my “smiles” as more submissive than confident. In hindsight, I think I smiled a great deal as a female in an attempt to say, “I’m really a nice person. I’m not going to cause any trouble.”
I was also (and still am, to some extent) an apologizer. I have no problem taking responsibility for stuff I’ve done wrong, but I also apologize for stuff I haven’t done wrong. I think women apologize more than men do (although I haven’t looked up any studies). I think it’s expected, in the “caretaker” role that women in our culture have been tasked with, that women are somehow responsible for making sure that everything is okay, and apologizing is one way to try to do this. Or maybe it’s just me.
Regardless, this whole thread has got me thinking about my own smiling (and my own apologizing). This is a great discussion – thanks, folks!
I’m from Canada and all the men I know are pretty smiley guys. Maybe that’s because we are generally more friendly (although Toronto may be an exception to this) or just because we are all so damn good-lookin’
Like Buddy the elf woud say…I love smiling, smiling is my favourite!
I think you must be right, Marcus . . . all the guys I’ve met from Canada are cuties. *swoon* What are you guys putting in the poutine up there?
But if you’re as smiley as us American “idiots”, the Europeans will be talking about you too (and I hear the Russians also consider us smiley fools).
Great subject! I grew up always wondering why, out of the blue, my father would just say, “Hey smile, Lyn!” and I would get bewildered by this because nothing funny was happening or I wasn’t getting my picture taken. And he NEVER said this to my brother!
I don’t consider myself a particularly smiley person but I don’t stop a smile if I feel one for whatever reason. I have always done things that came naturally to me and I’m not going to stop that now.
I was interested in hearing about the head nods to passersby. Being blind, I never knew that this is what men do. I just did it naturally. Interesting to hear about this action since I can’t see what people do! I have to rely on others to tell me what non verbal things are appropriate or not.
I’m European. And this smile discussion puzzles me. I’ve never heard, or noticed, that women smile more than men do.
I’ve about the smile that signals submission, though. Apparently smiles can mean so many different things.
As a boy, I was a smiler. I remember my scoutmaster complimenting me on it. But during my transition, I discovered that women were expected to smile even more. I went through a period when my gender presentation was borderline: people read me as female when I smiled, but knew I was trans if I stopped smiling.
It was hellish knowing that no matter how tired, glum, or anxious I was feeling, things would only get worse if I let my smile falter.
Things are better now — my presentation is solid when I don’t smile, and the smiles come more easily, too.
So if your experience is the reverse of mine, then yes, suppressing your smile will make a difference. Sometimes enough difference.
But you might consider keeping the smile anyway. I consider being trans a chance to do the “good parts version” of gender, and try to keep my more laudable traits even if they’re masculine. Maybe an easy smile is worth having an imperfect gender presentation.