Ah yes – the ever-popular “random man tells woman to smile” number.
When I did not smile (I continued looking for my keys in my purse and avoided all eye contact, in fact), he told me my “pretty face was going to waste.”
Ah, no. It’s not. It’s being put to good use keeping her eyes in their right place so that she can see to find her keys and make her way around, and keeping her mouth where it belongs so that she can eat. It’s not going to waste at all. Its function isn’t to provide something for that random man.
There are lots of comments. Some are interesting.
- A guy did this to me recently as I passed him on a sidewalk, and I was so thrown that I actually did smile a little. Then he frowned and said “No, that looks fake.”
- Oh, god. I don’t even want to see the array of comments about how dude meant no harm, feminists are crazy, yadda yadda. You people don’t get it. It’s basically a command to play cute for a random guy. Hard to imagine a random street guy telling another man to smile? There’s a reason for that. Fume.
- It must be tricky to get through each day when every interaction is forcibly turned into a power struggle.
He was just trying to compliment you. He did not literally mean your face is a waste unless you are smiling. All he did was call you pretty. You brought all the drama.
I love how people say the Seattle Freeze is not real when I read things like this. This could not be more passive aggressive.
He, a complete stranger and random person, was just trying to compliment you. And we all want complete strangers trying to compliment us on our appearance (by ordering us to smile)?
Think, people. It’s not that difficult.