Tuesday, April 10, 2018

Why don't you smile more?

She was always my vocal ideal -- and, of course, very successful in my childhood. I'm seeing, and indeed remember, that she almost always had a smile on her face.  

On the one hand, I've learned in voice lessons that that facial expression is helpful for internal mouth position for singing, but, on the other hand, I think there's more to it than that.

I was recently watching an interview of Joan Crawford


I notice she's always smiling, too, and she's not singing.

I remember that my ex used to have a book called Saving Ophelia.  I never read much of the book, but I did read the cover several times.  As I gather, the book was about preventing teen suicides in girls.  One of the things that they were concerned about was the insistence that girls always be smiling.  They felt that the requirement to smile when actually you're miserable could be a contributing factor in suicide.

I've noticed a fair number of videos with male performers, where the primary purpose of the females in the video is merely to smile and look pretty, for instance:



This all relates to my earlier post about cancer and the positivity police:

As I've gotten older, I notice that my mouth has sunk into a natural frown.  When my face is relaxed, the corners of my mouth turn down.  I often get people asking me if I'm ok, when I'm fine.  I'm not doing this on purpose: but I'm also not feeling positive about the necessity to always be smiling.  Constant smiling seems nervous to me, plus it's a source of facial strain.

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