No, the OP was asking why pretty girls aren’t smiling for his pleasure all the time like they used to. Outward appearance does not always reflect inner turmoil.
I have a feeling that sedentary lifestyle leads to more prevalence of depression.
When I have to do some strenuous job outdoors, I find I feel fine for some time after that. The light and the exercise just helps a lot. When more people worked in such conditions their potential for long term depression illness would have been much less likely to take hold and effect them.
Really the best thing for me would be to become a lumberjack, but financial realities and physical limitations (I’m getting older and have ocasional back pain) makes it more sane for me to be a DBA who takes antidepressants.
I also don’t seem depressed to anyone who knows me just casually, I smile and joke with everyone, and try to keep up everyones spirits.
Ok, well let’s look at that (and I think your phrasing of the OP was a bit off, but I digress): how then do you account for the now common place “emo” teen? Granted, teens have always been whiny, self centered bastards, but now they all shuffle around with their heads down like the world is just dark and full of sadness. As I’ve mentioned in the past, since I graduated highschool I’ve coached high school debate. Each year, the kids get more and more “emo”- dark clothes, sad poetry, etc etc. Also, more and more of them are on this or that drug to cope with their ever difficult lives (I mean, can you imagine your mom being such a bitch as to not let you go to the Death Cab For Cutie concert? That’d make ANYONE pop a Xanax, really).
So sure, I’ve been called out on walking around without a smile before, but the OP is right that people just look more and more depressed lately. At least, in my experience, of course.
Okay, here’s one of my twisted theories (turn on your sense of humor, please):
Part I: The OP mentioned '70s movies as a reference. When I hear people being nostalgic for “the good old days”, I wonder if their idea of the “good old days” has its origin in the movies and television shows from the '40s, '50s, and '60s in which real life was seldom portrayed. Movies tended to be more “happily ever after” and early TV was June Cleaver and Robert Young. Like it or not, pre-teens and teens have their expectations influenced by what they see on the screen.
Part II: In the '60s and '70s when movie and TV became more “grittier” and “more dramatic” and “realistic”, the influence could have caused the influential to have a more pessimistic outlook on life. Everyone’s more depressed.
Part III: Along comes MTV. The 2-second video shot is born. Along comes kids with ADD. No wonder, I would have ADD if I sat all day watching 2-second video scenes.
Part IV: Along come 24-hour news coverage. The more negative, the better. You can sit in front of the TV and see the very worst in human behavior around the clock. It least it makes us feel like we’re not as bad as everybody else.
It’s that damned television. 
Oh, and I forgot:
Part V: All through the years, interspersed through it all, 30-second slices intended to make you feel dissatisfied with you current deodorant, soap, beer, car, erection, your whole darned life, so you will go out and buy the new and improved …
Yeah no kidding. Some of these emo bands make Robery Smith from The Cure look like David Lee Roth.
If people seem glum it’s probably for a number of reasons. The world is a very competetive place and we are all competing for jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don’t need. We are constantly bombarded by a media that sends two messages 1) “normal” is being happy, rich, lsmart, ots of friends, superfantastic job, hip, trendy, good looking and creating a ton of drama and 2) the world is full of terrorists, psychos, criminals, pedophiles, gangs, rapists and other assorted weirdos all lieing in wait to rob, kill and otherwise ruin your day.
I imagine back in the day, without all this media hype, people just focused more on their day to day lives. They spent less time preoccupied with events 1,000 miles away that have nothing to do with them or battered by a constant barrage of bullshit telling them they aren’t good enough.
I think all he’s saying is that not every unpleasant emotion or less-than-optimal life situation requires medication. Tough shit - life goes on works just as well sometimes.
This is what I was going to say. I’m very happy, friendly, etc. However, sometimes when someone is creeping me out I’ll put on UberBitch face in the hopes that he/she will leave me alone.
Maybe you’re creepy Crafter_Man. 
Totally kidding here.
I admit that I don’t have much contact with teens anymore, but IMO they don’t seem any more depressed than they did when I was in high school in the late '90s. The music is much worse though, I’ll grant you that.
And the world really is a more depressing place now. Compared to the relatively halcyon days of the ‘90s, kids today have to deal with an older generation that is stealing their money to finance the present, a government with a systematic color-coded regimen to tell us exactly how anxious we’re supposed to be every day, and hypercompetitive peers and relatives who force the kids into jobs they don’t want to take because it’s shameful to be a plumber or a kindergarten teacher. Only doctors and lawyers will suffice. “Just take a nap” has turned into a sign of clinical depression on its own, as helicopter parents monitor their kids’ every waking moment. Our culture’s obsession with perfection means that kids now have to be “on” 24/7, no time for rest, no place for happiness that isn’t of a very strict and regimented kind. Can you really blame kids for retreating from such a world? I’m on the cusp of Gen-X/Gen-Y, and while my family is not hypercompetitive I feel the same hopelessness when I turn on the news and see that my future is slowly being chipped away by processes I can’t possibly fight against. And these people want me to smile for them? Fuck them!
But like I said, I don’t think kids today are measurably more depressed than kids in my day. And I do think that the OP’s question wasn’t so much “why are kids more depressed than they used to be?” than “why are kids–especially hot young females who should know better–looking more depressed than they used to?”
And also remember this Socrates quote: “Children today are tyrants. They contradict their parents, gobble their food, and tyrannize their teachers.” Just replace parts of it with “dress in black, look serious, write pretentious poetry, and cry a lot.” It makes a lot more sense to say that kids are just as moody as they’ve ever been, but the OP didn’t notice it in the '70s because he’s such a jolly guy himself, than to say there’s been a massive sea change in the past twenty years.
The move away from forced smiling all the time is a GOOD thing.
As far as I know, if you aren’t depressed the drugs will have no effect on your ability to get through your life. They will cost you money, of course, and cause side effects. But they can’t help symptoms that don’t exist.
Well, you wouldn’t be the first to say as much.
But yea, the late-teen-female “stare.” It’s quite creepy.
I agree, but it has to be said that besides the truly mentally ill, there are a crapload of whiners out there… ** Kalhoun’s** * My-Life-Stinks-Because-I-Made-Bad-Choices-and-The World-Owes-Me-Unobstructed-Happiness * people come to mind.
There’s a world of difference between being truly clinically depressed and just hating life because you made some fucked up decisions, and you don’t like the consequences. People in the first group need real help, while the people in the second need to suck it up and get on with life.
I’d wager that a vast majority of the people who claim to be depressed fall in the second category. If you spend all your money on a rice-rocket, drop out of college at 19, and then your life sucks because you sell cell phones at the mall for $5.65/hr, then I feel no sympathy.
Being a teenager can be stressful. I know I’m under a lot less stress now than I was when I was one, even excluding the fact that I had untreated depression and anxiety disorders then that are now treated.
Teenagers often have to live with people they don’t necessarily get along with and didn’t necessarily choose- it could be parents, or it could be roommates. If one of those college girls doesn’t get along with her parents, moving out might not be a financially viable option for her. If she lives in the dorms and doesn’t get along with her roommate(s), that’s not always easy to get out of, either.
If I want to, I have the option of staying in the same job I’m in pretty much indefinitely. Teenagers in high school and college don’t have that option, unless they have very wealthy and very tolerant parents. Career changes (and graduating from high school or college basically is a career change) are stressful, as is uncertainty about the future for some of us. For that matter, they have to get used to a new set of bosses every semester or quarter (when they start new classes), while I have only one boss, and don’t have to get used to a new one so often.
I don’t have to deal with strange men talking to me- I have a good excuse in that I’m happily married.
While I’m less hot than I might have been then (and I was so un-hot then, I could have frozen helium), I’m definitely happier and less stressed now.
Have you also considered that you just might be seeing them at a less-than-optimal time of day or in a stressful situation? If you mainly saw me early in the morning, you’d think I was thinking “I’m angry, life is unfair, and I want to kill myself”. If you saw me in the evening, you’d get a different impression, just because I am most emphatically not a morning person (nor are most teenagers).
There are almost certainly people who take antidepressants but aren’t really depressed. Depression is totally qualitatively different from sometimes feeling (justified or not) that your life sucks, as anyone who’s had it can tell you.
But they provide an endless source of fuel for the whiners. “My drugs aren’t working! I must REALLY be depressed! Waaaaaaaah! Why don’t these pills make my car payment for me?” Or, “Don’t yell at me! I’m depressed!”
Some of those drugs will give you a buzz, depressed or not.
I cannot agree more. I was just taken to task about not smiling enough-and I am 44. It happened last week, when I was working in the library. A co-worker approached me, all concerned because I wasn’t “smiling enough”. Well, no I wasn’t. I was concentrating on learning the new section of the library that day. What am I-library page as performance art? Grrr.
Why in hell do blonde women (or any women) have to maintain a perky smile at all times? Does it add to the decor or something? This has bugged me since I was a little girl.
Re depression. IMO, chronic low level depression is problaby as common as acne or body odor. If you are fortunate to have never suffered from it-kudos to you. Someday, you just might.
I am not aware of that. Can you point me toward information?
I can point you toward first hand experience. Imiprimine was so heavy I went off it after two days.
When I think of a “buzz” I think of a good feeling, a pleasant effect. In a quick read through that cite, I’m not seeing a pleasant effect, the sort of thing that someone would take a drug in order to get. Was there something specific there that I missed?
The original comment was that these drugs help nondepressed people make it through their lives, so I’m looking for something that could conceivably be viewed as a quality side effect for the nondepressed.
They sometimes have a dulling effect. I can’t explain it except to compare it to taking downers. Many people enjoy that flavor of high. My experience was much more intense than simply a nondescript “dulling” of the senses (and not pleasant), but it was not the norm.
Xanax is another frequently prescribed medication (I know three people who are taking it) that I think is over prescribed. Some take it in conjunction with antidepressants and some take it alone. It’s a tranquilizer. 'Nuf said.