“Keep smiling – it makes people wonder what you’ve been up to……..”*

June 14th, 2009 • 17:06

“Keep smiling – it makes people wonder what you’ve been up to……..”*

Like most things in life a real one is hard to fake and is usually reciprocated regardless of the occasion. It takes 17 muscles to make a really wide, appealing smile (called a Duchenne smile, usually involving the cheek muscles and squinting of the eyes) and therefor requires alot of practice.

The smiles we now use to meet, great, invite, intimidate, trick, deceive, lie, cheat and swindle people has been evolving for quite some time (30 million years if you believe Signe Preuschoft a primoligist who’s made it his life’s work to find out where we got this rather useful tool from) and was first used by monkeys to convey fear rather than love passion or happiness. It first appeared in early primates and was used to tell predators that they mean no harm. Since then we’ve used our smiles to express and (falsely) convey emotions that are far more pleasant and interesting.

Most humans practice they’re smiles while in the womb (something tells me I may have missed out on it …. looked like a fucking ape with his balls in a vice in my graduation photos …..) which suggests that along with breathing, crying and gagging our smiles are probably reflexive (well at least most are); funny thing is that most kids don’t begin to smile outside the womb till we’re 6 weeks old meaning we’re either born hating this life or somehow grow dumber during the birth process and have to re-learn the last trimester all over again….. I’ve always maintained that our existence was a letdown ….. especially if you were a child of the 80′s …….

As our first smiles appear we tend to smile at any adult who smiles at us, this allows kids to make sure that no adult tries to kill them and allows the parents to think that their baby is a happy little chappy (Having said that, babies will give their mothers wider smiles than their fathers …. the hungry bastards ……) Our interpretation of smiles also changes as we grow older and begin to think for our selves as it were. In a recent study (well 2001 … 10 years is fairly recent in the big scheme of things) smiles have been found to invoke positive em0tions in adults more than children and in parents more than normal people ……

But what makes that perfect smile (not to be confused with a Colgate smile)? What makes that smile that you just want to stare at all day, the kind that make you see right through the person and get at exactly what s/he is thinking?

Sadly, (as with most things in the medical profession) we’ve done a whole load of research, blathering, talking, arguing, poking & prodding and have fuck all to show for it…..

Apparently a perfect smile can never really be interpreted objectively (i.e. there is no magical smile scale but (surprisingly) a lack of facial symmetry is a good thing (symmetrical faces don’t look as nice as non-symmetrical ones when smiling), so is showing your teeth and gums and using your cheeks and eyes. Interestingly, the most attractive smiles seem to have very little to do with your skin texture, wrinkles, how pronounced your chin is or if you have dimples (well unless you have a dimple fetish …. in which case more power too you my friend)

There’s also some bad news for dentists and orthodontists as perfect set of pearly whites doesn’t always mean that your smile is a good one, a recent study conducted at St Georges in London found that darker skinned, tanned people had worse smiles with brighter teeth and vice versa ( …… Eshda3wa, you have every right to punch me in the arm for this but only if you’re willing to travel to London and slap the original authors in the face, then conduct similar study over here……). They also found that the older you are the more attractive your smile is and that women tend to appreciate a good smile more than men.

So forget about how stained your teeth are from all that coffee and all those cigarettes, ignore those crows feet and frown lines and smile to your hearts content ….. after all it’s taken us 30 million years to get it right ……

*Quoting an old college professors response to my showing up at a lecture 40 minutes late, once my mentor, then a colleague and now a very near and dear friend. Though knowing the bastard he probably stole it from someone else.

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