Stereotypes In Our Culture

In our culture, friendliness is conveyed through a smile and it is agreed in the discipline of Anthropology that the smile is something that carries across all cultures. In every human society, smiles convey the same emotions: happiness, pleasure, excitement and other positive feelings. However, smiles seem to mean different things between the men and women, of our culture, who exchange them. As my step father said, a woman who smiles is seen as friendly, but also more likely single. Simply put, smiling is an attractive quality and most people flock to a warm smile like moths to a flame. For women, smiling could mean many things. I, among others, have often feigned a smile in nervousness, irritation, awkwardness and sometimes false happiness.
According to Cunningham, in the 1800s, attractive women began to appear in many types of advertisements. Society got the idea that smiling was a natural trait for women and the women of the time caught on and began to emulate the pictures they saw. (328) This confuses people of other cultures when they encounter American citizens. We have much less formality when addressing strangers and authority figures, and we tend to flash our smiles automatically. When the McDonald’s chain restaurant was introduced in Moscow in 1992, the American’s who ran the businesses were extremely discouraged when the employees wouldn’t crack smiles when greeting customers, who I presume, also did not smile. (329) As a society, it seems that we do not consciously recognize our tendency to over use our smiles for any old occasion. Our teeth are used when anxious, in happiness and in an attempt to be socially pleasing. Along with our unrealistic images of smiles come unrealistic expectations of reality. Our faces are lying to us. Gaining respect is also a plight that the smile has caused personally and professionally for the female gender as a whole. If women are treated as sweet and domestic, expected only to fulfill the stereotype of the kind, listening role, we can not state our opinions thoroughly. It is time that the gentle sex make a new image. Levy
That purpose being a thing to look at. A thing that looks good, a thing that smiles. It is hypocritical for women to take part in these careers, however as later mentioned by Ariel Levy, in her interview with Christie Hefner, she asked her how she (Christie) felt about young women aspiring to be in Playboy magazine. Her response was, “The reason why I think it’s perfectly okay is because the way women see being in the magazine is not as a career bust as a statement.” (40) Levy goes on to