There Is No Perfect Smile
Why you don’t need to worry about improving your face
If you’ve been watching the news this last week, you’ve probably noticed a lot of noise about a new study published in the journal PLOS One. According to all the sensationalizing articles out there, scientists have discovered the key to the perfect smile.
The study in question was a beautiful piece of research by a group of American researchers that got people to rate a variety of smiles that were generated using facial modelling software on things like effectiveness and genuineness. They found that there were a number of factors related to how highly people rated a smile — like amount of teeth showing and smile length — and that there was a good middle-ground for these things after which people started to look creepy and weird.
For those of us concerned about our faces, this is great news. No more staying up at night, posing in front of a mirror like some sort of anxiety-riddled walrus, no more fear of ridicule whenever we give that gap-toothed grin to the camera! We finally know exactly how to improve our smile. With science.
Except, of course, that’s not how this study works at all.
There is no perfect smile.
Smile Science
Behind all of the media furore, and journalists trying to tell you how much teeth to show when you smile — just enough so that you look like Anne Hathaway, but not enough to look like Julia Roberts! — there’s actually an amazing piece of research.
It all starts with smile science.
There are a lot of reasons why we need to know what an ‘optimal smile’ might look like. It’s not just because scientists are social pariahs who need to practice smiling in the mirror so that they don’t look like Jack Skellington from The Nightmare Before Christmas.
The main reason is that smiles are important. They tell people that you are happy, they are part of non-verbal communication, and they form a large part of the social currency by which we sell ourselves to the world.
What this means is that injuries to the face can be seriously damaging, because not only are you left with scars but you may not be able to communicate things like simply joy any more. When surgeons perform reconstructive surgery, they need to know how best to shape your face, and although the prevailing wisdom is to make the smile as big as possible, that may not be the right thing to do. There are other applications (like teaching socially impaired children to recognize/practice smiles), but surgery is probably the biggest part.
The thing is, we know that smiles are insanely complicated. A slight change in facial muscles can make a smile go from “happy” to “waitress who’s had one too many dickheads tonight and just wants you to fucking pay already”. It’s also a difficult area to study, because it’s actually really difficult to fake a genuine smile — if you don’t believe me, try standing in front of a mirror and faking 10 smiles. By the 5th or 6th, you’ll probably be wondering why you look so much like a serial killer.
Which is why in this research, they did something really clever and used facial modelling software to make this guy:
Using this hellish creation, participants were asked to rate a wide variety of smiles that were created by manipulating the mouth angle, smile extent, and the dental show (amount of teeth you can see):
The participants were asked to rate these smiles on how well they corresponded with words like creepy, genuine, effective or fake. They found that, whilst there was no single ‘best smile’, for each characteristic there was a “sweet spot” — for example, if the mouth angle was high and the smile extent was high, but the dental show was low, people were more likely to rate the smile as creepy and not genuine.
Read The Damned Study
And here comes the media sorrow. It’s important to note that not all of the articles about this study were wrong, but a lot of them were.
For every journalist who talked about the “perfect smile”, I have something to say to you. To quote the study authors:
While this is the sweet spot that we found, it is important to be clear that there is not just one really, really good smile…just because your smile is different … doesn’t mean it is in any way bad
The scientists never said that they had identified a “perfect smile”. In fact, they noted that they had stayed away from manipulating an entire face — their model only tweaked the mouth — and that eyes are really important in smiles too and could effect their results.
And anyone who had read the study, or talked to the researchers, would’ve known that. These results were fascinating, but had less to do with the perfection of smiles and more to do with the complex way in which we perceive emotion.
Something that virtually everyone ignored is that there is never going to be a perfect smile because each face and situation is different: sometimes you want to look creepy. Sometimes being genuine is a problem. You don’t necessarily want to have a smile that always screams confidence to the world.
There is no perfect smile, just like there is no perfect face, no perfect nose, and no perfect person.
The truth is that this is brilliant research, but means very little to your life. Smile angles and dental show aren’t going to help you look genuine, because every face is different and smiles are more complicated than moving your mouth.
Keep living your life. Smile as much as you can, because it is too short and too wonderful not to.
And don’t worry about your smile. I’m sure it’s beautiful.
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