My wife is constantly taking shit from this sort of person. Last night she got caught walking home in a downpour. Caught in a white tank top. I don’t think I need to elaborate any further.
Perhaps she gets an extra helping of shit because people tend to assume that small Asian women are submissive. One fellow on the LIRR discovered that this is not in fact the case after she accidentally broke his nose when he grabbed her tits.
She saw him a week later on the train and he apologized. Imagine that.
I don’t think it’s because you’re a woman. I suspect they are either trying to cheer you up, whether or not you want it, or just think you’d look better smiling. I once had a woman (I’m a guy) tell me, “You should smile more” - as she left a bar with her male friend. I was just sitting there minding my own business and pitcher, waiting for my friends.
Indeed. I am quite fond of her. She did not even mean to break his face. She just wanted to punch him in the shoulder to get him to back off. But he flinched and tried to duck, so her fist took him right in the beak.
He was traveling with a few friends at the time, and apparently, they all laughed until their sides split. She did not get to enjoy the scene for very long, since she ran like hell.
all kinds of things that fell on the “nice” spectrum, from “long live your mother!” to “the only ugly one, the one in the middle” (walking with a friend) to more elaborate stuff. These were mostly from construction workers or truck drivers.
All kinds of nastiness, from “hey li’l cunt” while grabbing his crotch to stuff that would have been nice if the tone of voice hadn’t made clear it wasn’t. Mostly from guys over 40 who refuse to believe the reason no woman other than their wives will look at them unpaid is that they look like a cross between a slug and the Pillsbury doughboy.
In the US:
there was a case of a compliment yelled in Spanish from a roof before the guy’s mates explained that “nooo, don’t do that here, they call it harassment man!” and I confirmed it.
There have been several cases of gestures or rude noises, no words. Some even had the gall to try to look like it hadn’t been them who’d made the noise, when there wasn’t another person in sight.
If you include mumbles along the lines of a guy telling his mate “check out that ass,” then the range of countries increases, but the OP asked for shouts.
You could be right, but I’ve talked about this with a lot of women, and I haven’t run into one who hasn’t been told, by a stranger, to smile. Usually way more than once.
Neither of these things is the business of a stranger.
I note you said “once.” I can’t count the number of times I’ve been told.
And here’s a few other people who have noted the phenomenon. Not that numbers make me right, but I’m not alone in being annoyed by this and seeing this as mainly a woman thing:
Nancy Henley (Body Politics: Power, Sex, and Nonverbal Communication, 1986, New York: Simon and Schuster) wrote that the smile “is understood as a gesture offered upward in the status hierarchy,” and that this was part of why women smile more than men and are told to smile more than men and get chastised in public for not smiling.
So, I’m not saying it only ever happens to women. But the vast majority of the time it’s a man telling a woman to smile. And it may not seem like that big of a deal, but it’s grating and degrading and can be really fucking obnoxious if you’re not smiling for a damn good reason.
Obviously I, and the other two guys who commented hit a nerve, but I don’t care how many anecdotes you have. Yes, I’ve only been told once in a bar, but I’m hardly ever in bars, and that was the only time alone - ever. I can think of three times I’ve been told that, and since I don’t really notice that kind of thing, I’m sure it is much more often than that. The fact is, a man is much more likely to say something to a strange woman, than the other way around, but that doesn’t make the comment alone sexist or judgmental.
No, no nerve was hit. It something that affects me personally, and I was trying to maybe show you (and other people) how it feels to be told to smile all the time.
To be fair, your only refutation of my claim was an anecdote of your own.
I wasn’t talking about getting told this in bars. I mean, random men, on the street, commanding me (not suggesting) to smile. At least once a week.
Well, it kinda does; the fact that men feel they can say stuff to random women is a power play. But I think you’re missing a big point here.
It’s demeaning. It’s solely about the way a woman looks. It’s inappropriate. And I don’t want to pull this card, but if you haven’t been in the situation where people with more power than you are repeatedly demanding that you smile, or giving you crap for not smiling, you don’t really know how it feels.
It’s flirting. Go to any site devoted to customer service people complaining about their customers and you’ll see women talking about their employer telling them to smile and how their smiles get misinterpreted by their male customers as flirting.
She was flirting with you. Or at least suggesting how you can better flirt with others.
It’s flirting if done by someone in a bar or other situation in which the woman has made it clear that talking to her is encouraged. Walking down the street, minding my own damn business, it’s harassment – demeaning and inappropriate.
What does this have to do with being told to smile by random strangers on the street? I’m well aware that women are told to smile as part of customer service, and that a woman’s smile (or any smile from a subordinate to a person in power) can be taken as the smiler wanting to please the person being smiled at.
In fact, this is a good illustration of my point, in a way. Women are supposed to smile, even if they’re not happy, in order to make other people happy/at ease/buy stuff. When a woman doesn’t smile, she’s chastised. If she does, it’s taken as an invitation by the person being smiled at. There’s a damn good reason I don’t smile at people when I walk down the street.
Being told by a random stranger on the street to smile is as much flirting as being told you have “nice tits” by a random stranger on the street. I’m not sure why this is so controversial, out of all the things I said in my first post.
I do have a problem with calling it flirting, though, because that comes across as something harmless and desirable, and as if the people saying this really think they have a chance of getting in a woman’s pants. It’s about more than that, as I talked about in my first post.
But please don’t tell me to “cool your jets.” It’s really annoying that people are assuming that I’m over here freaking out. I’m sorry if my posting style somehow comes across as frenetic or something; I guess I have to work on that. It’s just incredibly belittling to be told that my jets are hot or that my nerve has been struck. I’m just trying to explain something that is hard to understand if it hasn’t happened to you.
I intended to illustrate how they think it is flirting and harmless; they probably do think they might have a chance, however small (cf.: the Home Depot story from overlyverbose).
Sorry, was just trying to keep it light with a little Bloom County reference.
I have never, even once, been told by a random woman to smile. There was one time, when I was 19, when a strange woman walked up to me and asked, “What’s the matter, sweetie?” but I was quite visibly distressed at the moment. That is, I was crying.
I cannot count how many times random men have demanded that I smile, or requested to know what was the matter with me even though nothing was the matter, and no indication of such had been given. Simply not smiling does not indicate that anything is wrong. Who, besides crazy people, walks around smiling at all times? And were I to don a perma-scowl, I’m not sure why I should be required to discuss my mood with strangers on the sidewalk. Perhaps the next time some random asschap walks up to me and asks me what is wrong I should respond, “People keep bothering me when I’m minding my business, trying to get home.”
I actually think “Smile!” annoys me more than “Nice tits.”
Lute, I’m sorry that I jumped down your throat, as it were. You’ve made some good points, and I appreciate it. I think I still disagree with the flirting thing when it’s done by random people on the street, but point taken.
I know guys who treat this the way spammers treat spamming. Your return on investment may be minuscule, but in the long run the few hits you get make it worthwhile.
Old story I was told. A guy yelled at a girl walking down the street, “Hey I would like a little pussy”.
She turns and holds her hands about 2 feet apart and says"so would I .mines about this big"
I recommend any man or woman who doesn’t think it’s a big deal or demeaning hang out around Wall Street and stop men hurrying by with ‘Perk up and smile! What could possibly be so bad?’ and ‘Hey there, turn that frown upside down!’ Then have lunch at a nice restaurant in the area and do the same with people at other tables. ‘Smile, you’d look more handsome!’ ‘Stop frowning – you’ll get wrinkles.’
The last time I was told this was at a coffee shop right after I got off the phone with a friend who told me she had to put down her dog The guy behind me in line – an older man in a business suit – tut-tutted and told me to ‘brighten up and smile’ as if he were talking to a child. The implication was hardly subtle – that I couldn’t possibly have any sort of stress or worry in my life, and even if I did, I should fake it so men like him could find me pretty. Sure he may have been flirting, but I was
