I’ve read about this but can’t remember the word for it. It’s a Condition and has nothing to do with any failing on your part. But screw the outsides…how do you feel inside? That’s what counts, whether it shows or not. And the people who really know you know when you’re happy. And probably point at their photos and say That’s my friend.
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… A good thing I do not live in the US where the social semantics of a smile are much different from my native Germany.
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I have frequently read Americans remark on ‘surly’/‘unfriendly’ (i.e. unsmiling) Germans, and also frequently heard Germans remark on Americans’ ‘phony’/‘disconcerting’ smiles. The mistake common to both is consulting the domestic signal book for reading foreign signals. US semantics of a smile: baseline friendliness (normal towards a stranger). German semantics: affection (obviously phony, even creepy in an adult stranger). </brush type=‘broad’>
I can’t smile on command either. And I hate it when someone demands that I smile. I just tell them I have Bells Palsy.
Just think about money:D.
You’re like Wednesday Addams. 
Ha! That’s great! I’m going to use that one next time, and hey; it’ll either get me out of the pic or it’ll crack me up and I’ll be smiling…
I find it very hard to believe that several posters in this thread happen to have a form of facial paralysis so rare that I’ve never even heard of it before. It’s much more likely that you simply don’t like posing with a forced smile (I don’t either) and/or are self-conscious about how you look when you’re smiling. Maybe your voluntary smile isn’t particularly convincing, but literally unable to exercise your facial muscles to bare your teeth? Nah.
Paralysis? Unable to bare teeth? Wtf are you talking about? No one here has said that, to my knowledge*–certainly not the OP.
*ETA: And having reread the thread I can say that no one has said it, with certainty.
I find it annoying when people launch into diatribes about what other people have/haven’t supposedly posted when it is patently clear that they haven’t read the very material on which they are commenting.
What irks me is that I have voluntary control of the muscles around my eyes, so I can do the ‘real smile’ thing on command - but I still look like a zombie in photos. Aargh!
To create a natural smile you think about things that make you smile. One will happen.
If it doesn’t it’s because, despite what you believe, you don’t smile very much at all.
I work in H/R and when I take photos for people’s punch card badges, I can say 90% of the people are like this. Forced smiles tend to look fake. The other ten percent are divided about equally, from those who can smile great on command and those who just can’t get a good smile regardless
All youse people who are saying you can’t smile on command, or not very well. How does this affect your social relationships? Do you find that people seem to avoid you more than you would like? Does it limit your romantic possibilities? Do people treat you like you are invisible or worse?
I never lack for friends. But I’m certainly a dedicated introvert.
You need to learn to smize. Tyra’s here to help.
I can’t either, not exactly. For photos I do what someone else above mentioned - laugh and then hold that position - and it looks OK, but that doesn’t really work for things like giving a neighbour a friendly smile in greeting. The expression I make then is, apparently, ‘I hate you and I’m going to kill you.’
No, but you do seem to use the word smile oddly. I wouldn’t say you can’t smile, just that your smile often looks fake.
The solution I find is to lightly squint my eyes while going slightly out of focus, while doing only a moderate smile. Wait a few seconds and gradually make it bigger. By the time the smile is at normal size, it will look like you are really happy–and I kinda am.
(It’s been shown that smiling for 30 seconds improves mood.)
IMO, it’s more than just that one thing, or it would be more easy to ignore. There’s also a German bluntness that comes across as rudeness elsewhere. The difference even sometimes comes across online, particularly in those people who do not seem to acknowledge that there is any difference.
Someone who just doesn’t smile a lot, but puts out other happy signs, and adheres to other politeness “rules” isn’t though of as being surly.
Do you think that Americans and southern Europeans seem to not get to the point, and would the typical German find that annoying?
Me too. If I try to force a smile the result is truly ghastly but if I find something funny or surprising I will smile naturally and look OK.
Unfortunately I have a very small mouth with thin lips that make me look like I am angry all the time. For a famous example of this see http://earlywomenmasters.net/cds/elizabeth/index.html.
That small mouth with pallid white skin, bright red cheeks and flaming orange hair was a comically unfortunate look for a teenage boy who was already suffering from severe social phobia.
Thankfully in my middle age my hair has lightened to auburn and my cheeks are not so red.