Minor Swing (Patreon)

After a not-inconsiderable amount of cajoling, something rarer than a Sasquatch in a G-string: a smiley pic.

If you’ve been around for a while, you’ll know that my tastes tend to veer toward what I call “the demure:” essentially, my way of justifying a default facial expression that (I feel) falls in the same box as ‘sultry’ or ‘approachably aloof.’ Or, as has been asserted by some in the past with what I can only assume were the best of intentions, ‘resting bitch face.’

Honestly, I don’t mind — it works for me, I enjoy sharing those kind of pics, it’s all just a wonderful creative process in the first place, and mostly? I’m just not the biggest fan of my smile.

It’s not that I’ve spent a life being an unhappy person (though I was frequently accused of being ‘so mature for my age,’ or an ‘old soul’ — I’m beginning to realize that those were just folksy euphemisms for ‘small human who will grow up to have anxiety and depression.’) But when I do smile, it’s because there has to be a reason.

I spent a long time growing up in the South, especially, where a forced cordiality was just kind of the norm. Nothing wrong with treating the guy stocking the shelves with that Warm Southern Hospitality, but for better or worse, it does force you to practice smiling a whole lot more than you normally would elsewhere.

I still have that smile. The one where you just contort your mouth, and look friendly enough. Then, cropping the picture so that only the nose-on-up to see a blank stare. We smile with our eyes.

I don’t use that smile too much anymore. It can come in handy. And that’s not to say I’m cold to people — I’ve mastered the friendly smirk. But on those occasions where I do genually smile? Hey, we all have our weird body images, right? I just think my smile is a little goofy.

Though... maybe I just need practice. I’ve actually been doing a decent job staving off some anxiety lately, and I’m proud of that. So I have been smiling at things I haven’t found myself wanting to smile to in a long time. I’m not getting happier, but the dampeners are finally being lifted on my original sense of happiness, which I think is already pretty good to start with (to the best of my recollections).

Uh-oh... but wait a sec... maybe it is just a matter of practice, and if I practiced more, my smile would improve, which means, by the transitive property, I would actually “be prettier if I smiled more.”

Good God, please don’t tell anyone I said that.