To the Women With “Resting Bitch Face”
“Are you okay? Are you upset about something?”
Even if I’m jumping for joy about something exciting on the inside, people always seem to wonder if I’m secretly angry or hurt. It’s not my personality or my behavior-it’s just my face.
Maybe it’s because the corners of my mouth naturally turn down a bit. Or maybe it’s because my features are rather small. Maybe it’s because I stopped using concealer to cover up the dark circles under my eyes. But whatever it is, the consensus is clear: I have a “Resting Bitch Face.”
A girl with a “resting bitch face” has a tendency to look like she’s annoyed no matter what’s going on. When people ask me “What’s wrong?” I laugh and tell them, “It’s just my face.” My perma-scowl is more of a running joke amongst my friends than anything else. There have been plenty of listicles compiled on the struggles of having a resting bitch face, but truthfully, there are times when I will use it to my advantage. When I’m walking down the street alone and don’t want to be bothered, I just turn that scowl up by 1,000% and go for the “If you cat call me, I’ll bite your head off” vibe. It also comes in handy when I want to scare off some drunk creep at a club.
While I basically treat the whole “RBF” thing as a joke, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t feel like there’s an element of sexism to the whole thing. First of all, there’s that nasty word “bitch” sandwiched in there, and while some women are perfectly happy to reclaim it, it doesn’t feel so good when someone else uses it against you. Plus, I’ve personally never found a male equivalent. Sure, if you say a dude looks like the type to start a bar fight, everyone knows what kind of guy you’re talking about, but it’s not really the same sentiment.
My real problem with the “resting bitch face” stereotype is that it stems from the idea that women should always be smiling and cheerful, giggling at every joke and grinning at every stranger. I can’t tell you how many times men have told me to “just smile!” And I know this happens to plenty of women-not just those of us who have been stuck with the “resting bitch face” label-but damn, do I have to walk around with a little name tag that says “It’s just my face?” Look, I’m not here to serve up positivity to every stranger I meet, and neither is any other woman. We’ve got shit to do.
To any woman who has ever been told she has a “resting bitch face”: you are under no obligation to smile at anyone, to laugh at jokes that aren’t funny, or to fulfill any specific notion of how a woman “should” act.
Maybe we could try out some new terms. “Stoic.” “Composed.” “Collected.” “Content.” Or maybe we could just stop labeling each other at all. And hey, if you go around telling people to “smile,” you might be the reason they’re annoyed in the first place.
