Has anyone ever told a male to smile more?

I once told a bus driver to 'smile and give your face a joyride'. He didn't hear me properly so another (drunk) man helpfully told him. He punished me by nearly putting me through the windscreen when he stopped at my stop.

I was surprised it didn't make the 6 o'clock news.

I still said 'thank you' when I stepped off.

JFC

thats an incredibly insensitive reading of your face, which would have been distress.

But my gcse chem teacher (all girls school) told my class that he had stopped telling girls to cheer up and smile when one responded ‘my brother died today’

This on being told to smile is quite funny

q

There are two forms to the "smile" question. There is the passive/aggressive form that is non-sexual. Examples are:

"Cheer up mate, it could be worse."

"Give us a smile. You might even feel better."

"What's up love, lost a quid and found 10p?"

Then there is the sexist version:

"You would look quite pretty if you smiled."

"A smile would make you really sexy."

I don't think that the second set of examples are ever directed at men.

Only once, 2 days after a missed miscarriage, I doubt he told a random woman to "cheer up, it may never happen" again

And ex told me I never smiled as much as I did when we first met - I still wonder if he never really got the correlation there...

I’m now 58 and all my life I’ve been told to cheer up or smile by various random men. To the point where I’ve actually got a bit of a complex that I need to smile more in my job etc otherwise I might come across as unprofessional or rude because of my natural resting face.

Fortunately, I’m realising it’s all bollocks so that’s good.😬

I was a junior doctor. He was a male nurse practitioner. He told me to "Cheer up! Who died?" I told him my granddad, the night before. I was later told to apologise to him for upsetting him.

See my reply to MarieDeGournay. Random people in the street have told me to smile, but it's not been very often. They mostly ignore me, which is a blessing I can understand women wishing applied to them.

That's fair, in my experience. It's mostly people I know who tell me to cheer up etc.

By random people in the street?

I once blew my lid at a man telling me to "smile love, it might never happen" not long after I found my mum had died suddenly. He looked shocked! I would like to think that man went on to be more mindful what he said to passing women after that.

In my former life as a nurse there was some ridiculous initiative about smiling more.
I can't remember the details but it was something like, if we smiled more we would be rewarded with a free biscuit in the canteen (woof woof). Might have been a coffee and a biscuit .
It just made me even grumpier than usual.

The classic answer to "Cheer up, love, it might never happen" is
"it just has".

I'm sure there'll be anecdotes saying yes somebody told some man to smile more in some specific context - maybe a public-facing job - but I doubt very much if large numbers of random women (or men) tell random men to 'Give us a smile, love'.

I was once told to smile by a load of builders as I walked out of the doctors surgery. I could have been given really upsetting news in there 😔

No, surely no man has ever been told to smile more.

I have a naturally unexpressive face, and I'm prone to looking like a surly bitch, and I only wish I'd owned it sooner.

I wish I had a pound for every time a male has told me to cheer up and smile. The infuriating thing is I usually actually comply! 😡

I'm a man. When I was younger I was quite often told by strangers at bus stops or just walking around town etc. to smile more, lighten up, "What's bothering you?", "Cheer up, it might never happen" and so on. Now I'm old, not so much.

I suppose I do have a kind of bedraggled expression most of the time. It did mildly annoy me when strangers didn't realise how happy I was, behind it so to speak. But not really a big deal.

I suspect women have a harder time and it can be an aspect of male entitlement and/or misogyny motivating such comments to them. I can see how you might be more annoyed if you're female. But the answer to OP's question is, "Yes."

So because they are not agreeing with your belief, they must be lying and/or have an agenda?

Not until you just gave me the idea.

I look forward to advising the next miserable looking chap I am obliged to interact with that he'll "catch more flies with honey than with vinegar".

Someone said that to me in the 1970's, when I was a bolshie teenager, I've never had the least smidgen of interest in catching flies, but it stuck with me. As does the smarmy businessman who told me to "cheer up, it might never happen" on the flight back to the UK to bury my mum.

Happens frequently - generally comes from older women working in shops. My natural expression is “pissed off”, so maybe that’s the reason.

Another time we were standing in a club chatting and not smiling in particular when a woman came up to us, grabbed my friend by the scruff of her neck and said "I'll wipe that smile right off your face" but was then promptly dragged off by her friend before we could say anything! So sometimes you can't win either way!

My DH got told to smile more by his female manager. He's little, autistic and suffers from (diagnosed) anxiety, so he can come across as permanently worried and awkward! I think he's in a minority though

My friend and I were always told by men to smile, cheer up etc when we were out. One day she'd had enough and told one of them to fuck off. He didn't get the hint and said "that's not nice" so she replied "you're not nice". That seemed to do the trick!