Every morning after fortifying myself with two cups of coffee and a breakfast of oatmeal, scrambled eggs, or a fruit and protein drink (I have an irrational hatred of the word “smoothie”) I take the dog for a walk. This perambulation consumes from half an hour to forty-five minutes, depending upon the route and how adamantly the dog insists on a forensic examination of the grass and foliage bordering the sidewalk. Our once middle-class neighborhood is deeply into a demographic shift to younger and more affluent, and the change has been marked by such phenomena as luxurious new houses, expensive automobiles, and a proliferation of dogs. Almost everyone it seems, has a French bulldog or one of the “doodles,” the breeds created by crossing poodles with labs, various types of terriers, and almost anything else you could think of except German shepherds and pit bulls. On these morning dog walks we might encounter a dozen canines, leashed to their typically, though not exclusively, youthful humans.
Our dog is usually amenable to interaction with other dogs, although he can be wary and skittish, for reasons that aren’t always apparent. A big dog might frighten him, or he might want to engage such a beast in play when he has just given the kind of small, yapping animal that seems to be getting more popular a wide berth. Who knows why? Maybe a pet psychologist, an occupation I didn’t know existed until we took our previous dog to a training class run by such a person. In any event, the potential for a moment’s interaction is high, both between dogs and the people trying with varying degrees of success to keep a firm grip on their pets.
A common one goes like this: An exchange of good mornings, followed by the question, is your dog friendly? While the animals circle and sniff and the humans perform the hops and sidesteps needed to avoid leash entanglement, there might be an exchange of names. I introduce our dog, Marlowe, and learn the other dog’s name. There might be a discussion of the respective breeds and possibly insincere comments about the dog’s physical appearance. Forced to say something by a person’s brief extolment of Marlowe’s handsomeness, I mumble a complement about their hairless Chinese crested or bulldog with a railway accident face. Then, “Bye, have a good day” or something equally innocuous. (Note: I offer profuse apologies to anyone offended by the aforementioned. Beauty in dogs, as in many things, resides in the eye of the beholder.)
Such interactions are common, but far from universal. Some dog walkers I meet are having a phone conversation, or reading texts, or watching a video, so intent upon their screens as to be oblivious to anything in their vicinity. Others have little to no interest in interaction, either responding to my “good morning” with a nod or minimal mutter of speech, or with nothing at all. No eye contact. Nothing.
I didn’t always believe in such courtesies as smiling and saying hello to people I randomly encountered in the course of the day. In fact, if I look in photo albums from my childhood, I’m hard pressed to find, after a certain age, any vestiges of a smile on my face. This might have been when I heard from some disapproving adult that it takes more muscles to frown than to smile—a wag suggested that if frowning used more muscles it would burn more calories, making the facial expression useful for weight control—but for me, a neutral expression which might well have resembled a frown was far easier than contorting my face into a smile, especially one I didn’t really mean.
According to the National Library of Medicine, a branch of the National Institutes of Health, the human face possesses some thirty muscles on each side. These striated muscles link the facial skin to the skull bone to perform such functions as mastication and emotional expression. Chewing and grinning, for example. These are triggered (innervated, in scientific language) by the cranial nerve in the case of expression, and the trigeminal nerve for mastication. These facts didn’t shed any light, for me, on the issue of the number of muscles involved in smiling and frowning, although it appears that gnawing on a tough piece of steak and glowering at the waiter who served it employ different groups of them.
The old adage about facial muscles found its way to Snopes, the fact-checking internet resource that has investigated urban legends and misinformation for more than thirty years. In a 2004 article, the site rated the claim “unproven” after examining a dozen assertions put forward in various media, all with different—sometimes wildly different—figures on the number of muscles involved in smiling and frowning. The authors observe that even if those numbers were accurate, there is no accepted way of measuring the amount of exertion applied by any single muscle. The article concludes, however, by referring to research that has shown that deliberately producing a smile or a frown can affect a person’s mood in positive or negative ways. To quote: “Facial expressions do not merely signal what one feels but actually contribute to that feeling. If we smile even when we don't feel like it, our mood will elevate despite ourselves. Likewise, faking a frown brings on a sense of not much liking the world that day.”
Does that really work? I’m not going to try to debunk psychological research with anecdotal evidence, but in my experience, offering a cheery “Good morning” and a smile to someone who doesn’t react is disheartening. It’s like the deja vu of high school, working up the nerve to ask a girl out and being regarded as if I had just belched or passed gas. A gloomy cloud gathers upon the day, rendering everything from that moment on in shades of gray. Okay, maybe that’s too extreme. But unreciprocated acts of courtesy do nothing to enhance the mood of a day that may have already begun to slip sideways in one way or another.
What do people of renown have to say on the subject? From Lord Byron we find this sunny offering: “Be thou the rainbow in the storms of life. The evening beam that smiles the clouds away, and tints tomorrow with prophetic ray.” William Hazlitt, the British essayist born the same year as Byron, put this prescription more prosaically. “A gentle word, a kind look, a good-natured smile can work wonders and accomplish miracles.” Sentiments that could be edited to fit that relentlessly upbeat genre, the greeting card.
But the way people smile isn’t any more monolithic than the way people chew their food. Herman Melville said, “A smile is the chosen vehicle of all ambiguities,” and if I smile at the person tethered to the overweight bulldog with multiple jowls I could be registering my feelings of good fortune in having a handsome (in the eyes of this beholder) animal or my sense of the bulldog’s ridiculous looks or something else equally supercilious. Likewise, the smile proffered by the stranger could be an ironic expression of the sentiment not wholly uncommon in our community, that old people who have owned their houses for a zillion years and insist on peace and quiet are an impediment to a vision of a vibrant, lively playground for younger people trying to get their slice of the pie. As one said in an acerbic community debate a few years ago over a proposed upscale hotel, “Old people, get out of the way.”
The subject of smiling has even infected the current presidential campaign. After last week’s debate between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, the Democratic candidate was faulted by conservative commentators for smiling in an excessive manner. In the world of gender stereotypes, a smiling woman is unserious, even frivolous, whereas a man who graces his audience with a smile is good-natured and may even have (gasp) a sense of humor. But apparently for those on the right side of the political spectrum, the glowering Trump and his often grim-faced running mate are the true models of presidential gravitas.
But two men whose names aren’t commonly uttered in the same breath brought both irreverent humor and a dash of nuance to what bears a great deal of psychological weight considering that it’s just a few contractions of facial muscles. In Raymond Chandler’s Farewell, My Lovely, the fictional detective, Philip Marlowe, has this to say in reaction to meeting a stunning femme fatale. “She gave me a smile I could feel in my hip pocket.” And W. C. Fields, who turned curmudgeonly wisecracking into an art form, said, “Start every day off with a smile and get it over with.” Here’s what I say. Smile when you feel like smiling, and don’t when you’re not in the mood to activate the cranial nerve. If someone objects to that dour expression on your face by telling you that smiling takes fewer muscles than frowning, refer them to Snopes.
You are truly a master of the absurd
Our new affluent neighbors are not very friendly. If you pass a mature person on the street, they will more than likely say hello or smile as they pass. A younger person (less experienced, and on their phone), will more than likely look down or ignore you as they pass. And, you’re right, it does affect your mood. A simple smile goes a long way.