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When your face is at rest, you don’t owe anyone an explanation about what it looks like. From Resting Bitch Face to, now, "Resting Dumb Face", we have to stop judging people's personalities or intelligence based on the way their face looks when it's resting.
A recent BuzzFeed list highlights the struggles people experience when others assume they're uneducated because their lips part a little when they are listening, or their brows furrow when they are concentrating.
“People constantly repeat themselves because they assume you weren’t paying attention. Or that you simply don’t understand anything they’re saying,” the list says. “In their defense, it is pretty difficult to tell whether you’ve zoned out or intensely focused.”
Sure, someone’s face can tell you if they are happy or sad or a whole bunch of other things, but it can’t tell you whether that person is mean, rude, kind, smart, or stupid. Science suggests snap judgments about someone’s face can be based on kernels of truth, but that those kernels don’t tell the whole story. Though sometimes you may be right in your quick opinions of someone, many times judgments are oversimplifications, or just plain wrong.
We must also consider how much more often women and girls are the subjects of these judgments, particularly Resting Bitch Face. There’s a common societal thought that women should be kind, nurturing, and happy. That they should smile. That women who are too “masculine” in their actions (i.e. pursuing business deals or negotiating a salary) aren’t desirable. Gender roles dictate that women are the nice ones who stay at home while men take care of the serious business, right?
Well it’s 2016 now, and gender roles are OVER. Women don’t owe you anything, much less a smile. Lets extend that gesture to all people: if you wouldn’t make judgments about a man with a scar on his face or a woman with a birthmark, let’s not decide someone is uneducated or intellectually inferior because of their furrowed brow, or that someone is unpleasant because of her resting frown. If you wouldn't judge someone on something else they can't control — say, their skin color — don't judge their face at rest.
Related: 20 Girls in Their 20s Open Up About How They Were Bullied — And How They Overcame It
Sex Ed 101:
