Should Women Be Able To Smile Analysis

Amy Cunningham, an editor and author from New York, wrote an article “Why Women Smile” to emphasize on how women are no longer smiling because it is a natural thing, but rather an everyday habit. Coupled with Cunningham’s supported reasons of using logos and ethos, she also uniquely brings in her personal experience by having ethos, making her argument more relatable. A long side with that, societies’ past and present impact on today’s world about women was also included as Cunningham put her own take into proving her point. Although this may be true, there were some fallacies found in her argument, leading it to the lack of fully portraying the audience.

For my syllabus assignment, I found a fascinating article titled “Why Women Smile” by Amy Cunningham. This is a great piece that looks at how women’s emotions are still heavily influenced by society, whether its suppressing certain emotions or exaggerating false ones. While this article was written over a decade ago, I feel like the points brought up and the overall message are still very relevant in todays culture and society.

Amy Cunningham’s “Why Women Smile” talks about how women are expected to smile all the time, resulting in it being a burden and the burial of their true feelings. She mentions that it has become a standard to portray a woman’s personal feelings in public.

At the level of denotation and connotation different codes can be seen, first of all, the smile as a denotation relates to the connotation of happiness and confidence of the women. This connotation signifies that the shown women are happy when it comes to their self-acceptance in their beauty and uniqueness. The denotation of the smile which is shown, made a clear statement from Dove so that the women who see that advertisement follow and brings the happiness.

Right here. It 's messages like these that reinforce chauvinism, and is the same thing inspires men to tell women to smile. In our society, women are cultivated to be nurturers, caretakers, attractive, docile, and "pleasant". Having women take ownership of their own emotional states is threatening to a patriarchal society; women have to be pleasant and happy at all times. Instead of challenging this artificially created

Thesis statement: Today I will be answering a few of the questions men have about women which include “ Why are women so insecure?”, “ Why do women think they are ugly without makeup?”, and “ Why do women think men have bad intentions?”.

Science released an article entitled “Facial Expressions—Including Fear—May Not Be as Universal as We Thought”, written by Michael Pierce on October 17, 2016. In this article Pierce discusses how 50 years ago it was assumed that facial expressions were universal. However, it has been found that in the present day, this may not be the case. Expressions such as happiness, anger, sadness, fear, disgust, or hunger, were all assumed to be expressed the same way as well as interpreted the same way. A study was conducted in the Trobriand Islands, were Trobrianders were shown as series of photos with facial expressions. They were asked to describe the emotions they interpreted from the photos, the results were intriguing. Pierce (2016) describes how

At first, I think the reason that Cunningham used monkeys to be as an example is to make the connection between two closely species. As the monkeys, they use their smiles to show that they are passive and not going to harm anyone around them; this detail makes us think about women use the smiles just like monkeys by a biological trait to show that they are non-threatening. The act of smiling is seen as non-threatening because of how it has been perceived by other people. This facial expression of smiling has actually gone through an evolutionary history much like any living species, following the rules of survival of the fittest. It has been seen as a happy expression, used when someone laughs or hears good news. Because of this, it is popularly seen as the stereotypical expression of happiness.

Previous researchers have concentrated on the effect of smiling on physical attractiveness. Reis, et al., (2010) conducted a research by using 15 males and 15 females neutral and smiling photos of each subject that served as a stimulus to 50 females and 50 males college students. Participants rated each photograph on 20 traits adjectives. An analysis of variance showed that people rated smiling profiles as more favorable than non-smiling profiles. Moreover,

This artwork is a political statement that shows some of the struggles that women go through on a daily basis. It's not the words men say when they tell us to smile, it’s the meaning behind it. It's as if when a woman is walking down the street, she owes it to the predatory men gawking at her, to smile- just for their viewing pleasure. And it never stops there. When a random man on the street tells me to smile for him, it's always in a demeaning way. Often times when I don't smile, which is literally 100% of the time that a random man tells me to, the man will get aggressive. I've been cussed at, flipped off, almost run over, and groped, all over a smile. So, members of the male species, don't tell a woman you see on the street to smile. Even

Amongst the statistically significant data, male researchers received more smiles from the opposite gender when making a neutral and a smile compared to its own gender at p<.01 for female researchers is receiving more smiles from the opposite gender when making a neutral face. In perspective of the difference between female and male researchers, females received more smiles from the same gender while male researchers received more smiles from the opposite gender. These data sets confirm the part in the hypothesis about men being less likely to offer a smile.

This article talked about the differences between punishments handed out to smiling verses nonsmiling defendants. The study found that a smiling verse nonsmiling defendant had more effects on male juror’s punishment decisions than it did female jurors. This is because a smiling face increases a person’s level of attractiveness. It also found that there were some effects produced by physical attractiveness and a smile when it comes to determining guilt and punishment. The study’s results especially found significant relationships between defendants who were rated unattractive and who were not smiling. According to the article it was much more common for a guilty and unattractive defendant who was smiling to receive leniency in punishment then the guilty attractive defendant who was smiling. However, the results found that men where the ones who were more lenient with the punishment of smiling defendants especially if the defendant was a woman.

This idea is portrayed very often in the scene from ‘Up’. One specific example is seen when the male character, Carl, is watching his wife, Ellie, paint their mailbox. He is staring at her intently with a grin on his face, his eyes appearing to be soft. One could interpret this as an expression of interest and affection – Ellie clearly does, as she looks up at him in return and smiles. Another example occurs when Ellie visits Carl in the hospital after he has broken his leg. She glances at him out of the corner of her eye, with a slight smirk on her face. This is one example where there exists an issue of intentionality, as often is present when it comes to nonverbal communication (Hall, Carter, & Horgan, 2000). An observer who is unaware of the couple’s relationship and the circumstances surrounding the situation may mistake Ellie’s glance as a sign of annoyance, however those with more knowledge on the setting can realize that the smirk expresses the thought “Well, we both know what this means...”. Therefore, this particular scene does an excellent job of demonstrating the ambiguity and complexity of countenance in nonverbal communication.

The argument of The Beauty Myth is that as women have received more eminence, the standard of their personal appearance has also grown. Wolf’s position on the issue is that this type of social control is potentially just as restrictive as the traditional roles of women. The Beauty Myth discusses how society’s viewpoint of beauty is detrimental to women because it causes many emotional and psychological problems to women who strive to become “perfect”. This book is important due to the fact it raises awareness to the issues that many young women are currently facing.

There is a common clique stating that beauty is pain. However, this message has a dangerous connotation to it, and the poems “Barbie Doll” and “Beauty” identify the woes of striving for society’s image of beauty. In today’s society, what is considered beautiful emphasizes physical characteristics over other aspects, also women can drastically change their self-perception depending on whether they are engaged in following the trends.