Has anyone ever told a male to smile more?

[CarefulN0w]

In this particular instance it’s conductors, but am sure it applies widely.

I’ve definitely been told as a nurse to smile - my male counterparts, not so much.

Has anyone ever told a male conductor to ‘smile more’? I doubt it

https://www.thetimes.com/article/113c70aa-1526-4915-9fda-e6a2747379fa?shareToken=f727b132f4039ed48b85ded218d9dcc8

I used to find it so frustrating and embarrassing as a teen/ young woman when random men would tell me to smile. Why? They wouldn't have said it to boys.
I find it disturbing.

Yes.

I've frequently been told to cheer up, smile it might not happen, answered with "only OK?" when I've replied to "how are you?".

No.
Men and boys smile at me far too much!!

I thought you were referring to conductors on buses! Christ, bus drivers are proper miserable, a hello or thank you would do for me. I tend to overcompensate when faced with someone who's just blanking me; maybe I should try requesting a smile instead.

Really interesting article thank you @CarefulN0wi shall look out for the film.

I’m not often told to smile more but I’ve certainly been on the receiving end of misogyny including, back in the day when I was a lecturer and we gave students photocopied handouts, having a random bloke wander up to me in the photocopying room and hand me his photocopying. I stood there blankly for a moment then told him we all did our own and handed it back.

There will be posters saying that yes of course-in fact it probably happens even more to men than women. They are not posting in good faith.

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!

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

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!

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

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.

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

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."

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 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.

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'.

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.

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.

By random people in the street?

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

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.

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.

FFS

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.😬

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...