Revealing Smiles

i have a quote on my refrigerator that says “The most wasted of all days is one without laughter” by ee cummings. i take it seriously and have spent a lot of my life observing and participating with people who smile and laugh. i tend to put a lot of store in a persons smile and how they laugh and find you can usually figure out which are the phonies and which are the real deal.

Usually the type of smile you view has a lot to do with how trustworthy you take a person to be. Most people, myself included, can spot an untrustworthy smile even when it happens so rapidly you might have missed it.

Fake smiles usually come from people who are talking out of both sides of their mouth. Their smiles don't look sincere, honest, approachable or friendly. They want you to think they are positive and charming and can change the world but actually they are negative or have some ulterior motive they want you to buy into.

A smile, on top of expressing joy can hide all sorts of things; embarrassment, confusion, fear, and anger, but it is really the eyes that can give you away. Apparently the muscles around your eyes can't be forced to look happy. A real smile includes raised cheeks and the bunching up of skin around them and this is how most of us gauge a person's sincerity.

Dr. Niedenthal who studies smiles says an embarrassed smile is often accompanied by a lowering of the chin. This lowering signals that the smile is trying to camouflage an underlying conflict. A greeting smile includes raising of the eyebrows and indicates a welcoming. She also says many of us flash power smiles while raising our chins so as to look down upon others.

Unfortunately Romney's smile just rubs me the wrong way. Every time i see him smile i think what a sly dude this guy is. His smile is so fake and contrived it makes me feel like someone has run their fingernail over a chalk board trying to alert me to the hidden agenda this man conceals. His smile puts me on alert, makes me uneasy, i don't believe it and i don't trust it.

When i was researching smiling i came across a comment by an Italian that said Americans smile more than other nationalities and that is because a lot of the smiling is fake. He claimed that other nationalities didn't use fake smiling as much as Americans. Other comments ranged on about how a smile can hide something dark, that confidence men use such smiles as well as pickpockets, pedophiles and politicians.

Dr. Niedenthal says some dominant power smiles actually say “You're an idiot, I'm better than you.”

i don't think i'm alone on this. Even Republicans have had a hard time buying into Romney's schtick and i think it has to do with his smile it just doesn't ring true. i think most conservatives would prefer to have someone else to support and i think it is because they recognize there is just something wrong with his smile.

i wonder if leaders around the world who were watching the debate the other night have any confidence that Romney stands for anything? What about the citizens of the United States? Romney changes his positions faster than you can change the channel with the remote. He agreed with President Obama on the finer points of our diplomacy during the debate but in weeks past lambasted him for the same policies. Now he says he is a peacemaker last week he was a warmonger and all the while he wears that awful smile. Who is this man? What does he really believe? How would he govern? No one really knows even those who are going to vote for him.

A man whose positions change from minute to minute and who has a smile that is suspect in so many ways just gives me the willies. 

See ya next week.