However, she’s a definite minority. As weird as this would sound to most people, since I’ve been researching other cultures, I’ve been trying to cut down on smiling. A decent amount of my smiles are definitely fake. It’s a defense against how badly I’m treated where I live. In school, I’d smile constantly to show the people who bullied me, “You haven’t broken me, and you CAN’T break me!” Years later, I barely even know how to smile sincerely anymore! American fakeness is all-pervasive and quite pathetic.

Also, in English it’s common to say “I love pizza, I love my house, I love this wine, I would love to go shopping, ect” The words I love (yo amo) have a very profound meaning. In Spanish one would never use the word “love” to express something you just “really like”. It’s only used when referring to a person or anything that has to do with people. For example in Spanish you can say I love my country or I love my home, being that your country and your home are made of people.

So if a smiling American says to you, “I love your hair!” Don’t think they are trying to convince you that he/she has affection towards your hair, or that your hair brought out such a great emotion that it caused a rare smile on his/her face. Just enjoy the compliment, smile, say thank you, don’t read too much into it and move on with your life.

In America there are “over 50 different types of smiles,” whereas in some other countries there may be only 1 type of smile (in which case a smile is typically only used to reflect a limited range of emotions, usually happiness or love). Hence the confusion on behalf of many new to the U.S.

Americans use smiles to express a wide range of emotions and unspoken meanings. Smiles can mean anything from a sign of mere acknowledgment or a greeting, a sign of true happiness, a sign of love, and even a sign of spite, resentment, or condescension.

In this way it may be similar to speaking Mandarin. The word for “love” means something completely different based on it’s verbal tone. In American culture, a smile means something completely different based on it’s physical “tone.” If you never grew up experiencing these tones, you might listen to someone speaking Mandarin and think that they love you or that they’re not genuine when they use the word love. (This is probably an exaggeration, but it’s the same type of “lost in translation” situation.).

In another similar example, in Italian culture it is not atypical for someone to hold your hands while you speak. Americans view this as an act of Italians being friendly, since physical contact is only used as a sign of affection (much like smiles are only used as a sign of affection in other cultures). However, many Italians do this as a sign that they want you to shut up (lol). If you weren’t brought up with the different types of physical contact in Italian culture, you might not recognize these differences. This might shock some foreigners or cause some to think Italians are “insincere in their physical contact.”

As such, it might be difficult for someone who isn’t raised in American culture to tell the subtle tones of one type of smile from another (in some cases being culturally brought up with only one use for a smile), and so they may have a difficult time adjusting to the smiley Americans or simply cast the phenomenon off as “Americans just aren’t genuine with their smiles like we are.”

Overall, although the U.S. is largely a more verbally expressive country, Americans are much more non-verbally communicative through their smiles than many other cultures are. This just may take some getting used to.

If you smile
With your fear and sorrow
Smile and maybe tomorrow
You’ll find that life is still worthwhile
If you just…

Light up your face with gladness
Hide every trace of sadness
Although a tear may be ever so near
That’s the time you must keep on trying
Smile, what’s the use of crying
You’ll find that life is still worthwhile”

I think these lyrics sum up most Americans attitudes about smiles. Some say our smiles are insincere. But to this I say bah. Americans are optimistic people. We know we are not perfect. But in our heart of hearts, we would like to think we are honest and hopeful. This is why we smile.

I know as a woman. I have had entire conversations with other women who I did not even know just by smiling. The smile conducted between me and a little old lady said this:

Me- hello little old lady, I respect you as my elder, so here is a smile. I hope it brightens your day.

Old lady- thank you for smiling young lady. You seem respectful, and lord knows there are so many young people who aren’t. So I thank you for your smile. Have a nice day young lady.

Me- Thank you mame. I will and I hope you do to.

And that is what our smiles said, and I held the door open for her as she left the library because she had a crap load of books.

Now you do have contradictory situations. Where the smile is more of a feral act of bearing your fangs towards your enemy. I think the best example I have seen of this was the during the last vice presidential debates. Biden and Palin seemed more like they were snarling at each other than smiling.

But even then. There was still some optimism because both debaters were trying to project confidence and create a political victory. They were both smiling because in their own minds they were manifesting their victory, and in America winners smile (especially on the box of wheaties cereal).

This is the beauty and power of a smile. You can enrage, frighten, and disarm an enemy by smiling in their face. But you can also use the same smile to shower feelings of love, respect, and warmth on loved ones and strangers. If anything. I would say Americans have gathered an understanding of the smile from frequent practice and use. We respect and love what smiles stand for, and can’t imagine not having those frequent reminders in our lives as Americans.

I think, personally, that it’s not just smiling. The superficiality of American civility in general confuses me (this is the pompous, “as a Brit” moment). I had to deal with a lot of Americans last summer on a fleeting, anonymous basis. 90% would introduce themselves with “how are you?”, and I’d always fall for it, thinking they actually expected an answer, not realising that the question part of the question had no significance; or at least, a different significance.

“How are you?”
“I’m OK, yours–?”
“We’d like to…”
*rob is left open-mouthed, mid-response, feeling half-presumptuous, half-annoyed*

Dacoit: One can keep peeling an onion, no? And they def. don’t brush their teeth in NYC. sheesh.

The more you spent on your teeth, the greater the compulsion to show them off?

As dacoit points out, even in the US, smiles vary. I have not seen a New Yorker (city, not state) smile, for example. When my wife moved back from Jersey to Atlanta, she was surprised at how many people here say hi to strangers.

The Pakistani sneer I have never liked, especially when it is so status-conscious. And at the wedding, no one allows the bride to smile. I have seen family elders admonishing the bride whenever she smiles during the ceremony.

There is a stereotypicality to the idea that American smiles are fake but smiles, “hi”, “how are you?” to strangers here are just that, nothing more.

smiling, when you don’t really mean it, is one of the crullest things you can do in the hindi film song tradition, a direct continuation of the hinustani-urdu poetry tradition….

and oh, i’ve had a whale of a time in lahore without anyone smiling much – except once they figured i was indian. then the wattage came on, and the conversations, and the discounts/freebies. and boy, did that feel great…

people in delhi/elsewhere get really puzzled becuase i have a big goofy absent minded grin on my face a lot… ‘why does he smile this much?’

i would recommend watching the newwest indian advertisement for ‘happydent’ gum – a bizzzare twist on both sub-coninental ‘smiling’ and chris pinney’s camera indica…

Pakistanis don’t floss, don’t use mouthwash, don’t wear braces in childhood, don’t have electric toothbrishes, don’t whiten, don’t use waterpicks — what do they have to smile about?

Hairy Mango pits and sugarcane are not substitutes for flossing, and cardomom is not a breathfreshener. Keep your yellowed teeth to yourselves.

so, ok, i know it’s crazy, but just for the sake of science let’s say that it’s occasionally possible for an american smile to be FELT and MEANT. the question that plagued me most in the land of the pure was not, why aren’t they smiling, but, what are they FEELING? (since my regular signposts – words and faces – were no longer reliable). let’s set aside the smile of the Beloved for a moment (along with the arch of her eyebrow and her fragrant curl). let’s get down to brass tacks with ordinary internally mirthful, loving folks. certainly non-smilers feel what i would consider to be smiley-feelings (love, happiness, a general bubbling over of warmth) in at least some circumstances similar to those which make smilers smile. i wonder how those feelings (where they come from, where they end up, the pictures they create or emerge from in the mind…) might be different when they have no physical manifestation.

i tried, as an experiment while in pakistan, to resist the upward tugging of mouth muscles when i felt a tiny leap of glee or a sweep of gratitude or appreciation (ok i’m not counting sitting in a chair being solemnly presented with wedding money by a string of aunties while the tv in the background blared the good, the bad and the ugly…). in those situations not smiling felt much like holding in a sneeze, only harder.

so…i guess for me the question is: are the non-smilers holding back, are they stifling an impulse ? (perhaps without much effort, having practiced from any early age.) or, is the facial impulse simply not there, are the muscles not connected to the emotional center in the same way?

there’s gotta be a study….