Don’t Tell People To Smile
Sometimes, when a person is looking sad, angry, or just mildly disinterested, a stranger will tell them to smile. Don’t do this.
While there are many reasons that telling someone how to express themselves is a bad idea, I’m going to list five. And if you really feel the need to intervene, I’m going to offer a suggestion for what you can say instead.
Before we dive in, I should note that my advice here is not novel. There are quite a few pieces out there that also encourage people to refrain from telling others to smile, from USA Today to the Washington Post. But since this phenomenon persists, I’m going to add my voice to the chorus. If it reaches even a few more people, it’s worth it.
With that said, here are five reasons you shouldn’t tell people to smile.
In most circumstances, telling people what to do is not welcome.
This should be self-explanatory. If you’re waiting for a train or standing in line at the grocery store, how would you feel if someone told you to stand up straighter? Or to tuck in your shirt? You may be annoyed, alarmed, or just completely nonplussed. Telling someone to smile is no different.
It’s intrusive.
Imagine that you’re quietly minding your own business. You’re thinking about your work day or figuring out what you want to do for dinner. Then someone you don’t know breaks into your train of thought to tell you to smile. What’s that all about? The stranger may have the best of intentions, but interrupting someone’s reverie is an unnecessary violation of the other person’s space.
It’s okay to feel calm, content, frustrated, angry, sad, etc.
Telling someone to smile is a roundabout way of telling someone that they are doing something wrong. But many people don’t smile when they’re feeling calm and content. And very few people smile when they’re feeling frustrated, angry, or sad. What’s more, it is perfectly normal to feel frustrated, angry, or sad.
Let’s say that you see someone who looks sad and you tell them to smile. Maybe they’re grieving the loss of a loved one. Maybe they just lost their job, or got a scary medical diagnosis, or they just read a heartbreaking chapter in a good book. You’ve just told them that what they’re feeling is wrong — and you are way out of line. They’re experiencing and expressing perfectly normal, healthy human emotions. And, remember, it’s none of your business anyway!
You Could Be Wrong
While humans are generally good at interpreting people’s emotions from facial expressions, we’re still often wrong. For example, a 2020 study found that study participants were accurately able to identify other people’s emotions 72% of the time. That’s pretty amazing! But it still means that they misinterpreted people’s emotions 28% of the time. This can be due to cultural differences, an inability to notice so-called microexpressions, or because of implicit racial bias, among other reasons.
What all of this means is that you may be telling someone to smile because you want to cheer them up, but it’s entirely possible that you’ve misread the situation and they don’t even need cheering up. Instead, it’s very likely that you’ve annoyed or alarmed them.
You Could Scare Someone
Lastly, it’s entirely possible that telling someone to smile will scare them. The person who wasn’t smiling is usually (but not always) a woman. The person urging them to turn that frown upside down is usually (but not always) a man. And when a strange man tells a woman how they should look, well, that’s just creepy as heck.
If You Have To Say Something…
If you see someone who you think is upset, and feel compelled to intervene in some way, do not offer them unsolicited advice or tell them what they should do. If you must say something, I encourage you to simply say “Are you okay?” If they say they’re fine, leave them alone. If they say they’re having a rough day, just say “I hope it gets better” and then leave them alone.
Ultimately, this comes down to respecting other people’s privacy and personal space. Telling someone to smile has much greater potential to harm or alarm than it does to actually make someone feel good about themselves. So mind your own business.
