Don't Tell Me to Smile: The History of Telling Women What to Do With Their Faces
Quick Answer
Why do people tell women to smile? Telling women to smile is a demand for emotional performance, not a compliment. Research consistently shows that women are told to smile far more than men, primarily by strangers, and that women who maintain neutral expressions are perceived as unfriendly or incompetent while men with identical expressions are perceived as authoritative. The expectation has specific historical roots in 19th-century ideals of femininity that assigned women the role of emotional caretaker, required them to appear pleasant and available at all times, and treated their neutral resting state as a social problem requiring correction.
"Smile" directed at a woman by a stranger is not a compliment. It is a command. The distinction matters because one is offered freely and the other requires compliance, and the people issuing the command tend to make that distinction very clear when it is not met. The history of telling women to smile is also the history of who gets to have a neutral face in public and whose default expression is treated as a personal failing. That history is long, well-documented, and considerably more interesting than the men who keep doing it apparently realize.
The Concept With a Name: Emotional Labor
In 1983, sociologist Arlie Hochschild published The Managed Heart, a study of flight attendants and bill collectors that introduced the term "emotional labor" to describe the work of managing one's feelings and expressions to fulfill the emotional requirements of a job. Flight attendants were required to smile, appear warm and welcoming, and manage passengers' emotions as a formal part of their professional duties. Bill collectors were required to project authority and indifference. Both were performing emotional work that the job demanded of them, and neither was compensated for it as labor the way physical work was compensated.
Hochschild found that this emotional management was distributed unevenly by gender. Women in service roles were consistently required to perform warmth, pleasantness, and availability. The smile was not a personal choice. It was a job requirement, evaluated in performance reviews, enforced by supervisors, and expected by customers who felt entitled to it. When women did not provide it, they were considered to be failing at the job, regardless of whether the actual job had been done.
The Managed Heart was published forty years ago. The dynamic it described is considerably older.
Where the Expectation Came From
The 19th-century American ideal of womanhood was formalized by historian Barbara Welter as the "Cult of True Womanhood": a set of four virtues that defined proper femininity as piety, purity, submissiveness, and domesticity. A true woman was morally superior to men, which meant she was responsible for managing the moral and emotional atmosphere of the home. She was the emotional regulator of her household. Warmth, pleasantness, and cheerful availability were not personal qualities she might or might not have. They were obligations that came with the category "woman."
This domestic ideal mapped directly onto the public sphere as women entered the workforce in larger numbers through the late 19th and early 20th centuries. When women took service jobs, the emotional labor that had been their private domestic obligation followed them into professional spaces. The woman at the department store counter, the telephone operator, the secretary, the waitress: all were expected to be pleasant, accommodating, and visibly happy to help. This was not considered a skill that deserved compensation. It was considered the natural expression of a woman doing her job correctly.
The flight attendant was the most studied version of this expectation, but not the only one. Hochschild estimated that roughly half of all women's jobs involved substantial emotional labor requirements, compared to about a quarter of men's jobs. The smile was the visible surface of that labor, the part a stranger on the street could assess and demand.
The Science of What a Neutral Face Means
Research on how facial expressions are perceived has produced consistent findings that are not particularly flattering to the people doing the perceiving. Men with neutral expressions are routinely rated as authoritative, confident, and competent. Women with identical neutral expressions are routinely rated as unfriendly, cold, unapproachable, or upset. The same face, assigned different genders, produces opposite interpretations. This is not a marginal finding. It replicates across multiple studies across multiple countries.
The phenomenon got a name in 2013 when behavioral researchers Abbe Macbeth and Jason Rogers coined the term "resting bitch face" to describe a neutral facial expression that is perceived as expressing negativity. The phrase spread immediately and universally, because millions of women recognized it as the name for something that had been happening to them their entire lives. The cultural moment around the term was not just about finding it funny. It was about naming something that had previously only existed as a vague accusation, a sense that one's face was always slightly wrong, never quite pleasant enough, in need of correction.
The Street Version
"Smile, you'd be prettier if you smiled" is not a compliment in any meaningful sense of the word. A compliment is unrequested and freely offered. This sentence is a conditional: your appearance will be evaluated more favorably if you perform the emotional state I want to see from you. The implicit contract is that your face in public is subject to other people's approval, that pleasantness is owed to strangers, and that failure to provide it is a social violation you should want to correct.
Studies on street harassment consistently find that women experience this form of directive comment beginning in early adolescence, that it comes primarily from adult men directed at younger women, and that the response to non-compliance is frequently hostility. The smile demand is functionally a test of compliance. When a woman smiles back, the interaction is over. When she does not, the interaction often escalates, because the actual point was never the smile. The actual point was the compliance.
The Workplace Version
Research on workplace gender dynamics finds that female employees are evaluated on warmth and likeability in ways that male employees are not. A man who is serious and focused is perceived as professional. A woman who is serious and focused is perceived as cold or difficult. The expectation of pleasantness is embedded in how female employees are hired, evaluated, and promoted, even in fields where warmth is not a stated job requirement.
The specific instruction to smile is directed at female employees by supervisors, clients, and colleagues in ways that are documented and widespread. Studies of performance review language find that women receive feedback about their demeanor, their approachability, and their emotional presentation at significantly higher rates than men, and that this feedback is considered relevant to job performance in ways that equivalent assessments of male employees' demeanor are not. A man is told his work needs improvement. A woman is told her work needs improvement and also she should smile more.
The Reclamation
Naming something changes how it can be discussed. Before "emotional labor" was a term, the work of constant pleasantness was invisible, natural, expected. After Hochschild named it, it became possible to identify it as work, to ask who was doing it and why, and to notice when it was being demanded without compensation or consent. Before "resting bitch face" was a phrase, the experience of being told one's neutral expression was wrong had no shorthand. After it became a phrase, it became possible to point at the dynamic and say: this is a thing that happens, it has a name, and it is happening to me right now.
The Don't Tell Me to Smile Crop Top is the short version of this entire history. The All Men Are Cremated Equal T-shirt is for the accumulated exhaustion of explaining why this is still necessary. The full Girl Power collection is for people who are done performing pleasantness for people who haven't earned it. If you want more on the history of institutions demanding things from women's bodies without their consent, the history of abortion rights covers how old and consistent that tradition actually is.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Why do men tell women to smile?
Research on street harassment and workplace dynamics suggests the smile directive functions as a compliance test rather than a genuine expression of concern for the woman's emotional state. It asserts that a woman's face in public is subject to evaluation and correction by strangers, and that pleasantness is owed to people she does not know. Studies consistently find that women who do not comply are perceived as hostile or rude, while the men who issue the directive rarely experience social consequences for having made the demand. The behavior is widespread enough that most women can report experiencing it from early adolescence onward.
What is emotional labor?
Emotional labor is a term coined by sociologist Arlie Hochschild in her 1983 book The Managed Heart to describe the work of managing one's feelings and expressions to fulfill the emotional requirements of a job or social role. Hochschild found that women were required to perform emotional labor, including sustained pleasantness, warmth, and approachability, at significantly higher rates than men, and that this work was treated as a natural female characteristic rather than a compensable skill. The concept has since expanded beyond the workplace to describe the broader expectation that women manage the emotional atmosphere of their homes, relationships, and social environments.
What is resting bitch face?
Resting bitch face is a term coined by behavioral researchers in 2013 to describe a neutral facial expression that is perceived as expressing negativity, displeasure, or hostility when it actually expresses nothing. Research on facial expression perception finds that men with neutral expressions are consistently rated as authoritative and confident, while women with identical neutral expressions are consistently rated as unfriendly or upset. The term spread rapidly because it named an experience that many women recognized: being told their natural resting expression was a problem requiring correction.
Is telling women to smile harassment?
Street harassment researchers and legal scholars have different frameworks for this question, but the behavioral literature is clear that directive comments about women's appearance and emotional presentation constitute a form of gender-based public harassment that affects women's sense of safety and freedom of movement in public spaces. Studies find that most women have experienced being told to smile by strangers, that it begins in early adolescence, and that non-compliance frequently produces hostile responses from the men making the demand. Whether any specific instance rises to a legal standard is a separate question from whether the behavior is harmful and well-documented.
What is the Cult of True Womanhood?
The Cult of True Womanhood is a term used by historian Barbara Welter to describe the dominant 19th-century American ideal of femininity, which defined proper womanhood through four virtues: piety, purity, submissiveness, and domesticity. Under this framework, women were morally superior to men and therefore responsible for managing the moral and emotional life of the household. Warmth, pleasantness, and cheerful availability were not optional personal qualities but obligations embedded in the category "woman." This domestic ideal followed women into the workforce as they entered public life, producing the expectation of pleasantness in service and professional roles that Hochschild documented in 1983.
Do women have to smile more than men at work?
Workplace research consistently finds that women face higher expectations for emotional performance, including visible warmth and pleasantness, than men in comparable roles. Studies of performance review language find that women receive feedback about their demeanor and approachability at significantly higher rates than men, and that this feedback is treated as professionally relevant in ways that equivalent assessments of male employees are not. Women in customer-facing roles are evaluated on their emotional presentation in ways that affect hiring, advancement, and compensation, even when pleasantness is not a stated job requirement.
