And because things weren’t all bad ALL the time, I understood why we would smile and be happy. There were lots of happy times and happy days and things to be grateful for. There was certainly a reason to believe our lives were still “worthwhile.” Until there wasn’t.
There’s nothing exactly wrong with the song, “Smile.” Taken from one perspective, it is about finding the inner resilience one needs to carry on despite misfortune. Simple enough. We ALL need to create, cultivate, discover our inner resilience at one time or another. From what I witnessed, experienced, understood my mother had fairly great misfortune in her relationship with my father and her subsequent attempt to raise a happy family with him. She was probably the first person that I witnessed actively creating and cultivating her inner resilience.
But in a culture that already tells women to “shut up and smile” in every possible way, this song is also total bullshit. Faking happiness while in the throes of great pain is perhaps one of the most damaging ways that women cooperate with the patriarchy and rape culture. This one act – that is lauded for being so self-sacrificing and so “motherly” – is responsible for so many stigmas around women’s mental, emotional and even physical health. We smile through postpartum depression. We smile through sexual, physical and emotional abuse. We smile through workplace harassment. We smile through relationships with people who don’t treat us well. We smile through chemotherapy. We smile through shitty interactions with total strangers who have deemed it their right to treat us badly. We smile through the difficulties of pregnancy. We smile through misdiagnoses. We smile through unnecessary C-sections and hysterectomies. We smile through harassment from teachers. We smile through acquaintance rape and marital rape. We smile through feelings of total overwhelm and the expectation that we can give everything to everybody all the time. We smile through the shame that Diet Culture heaps onto us in the guise of “health.” We smile at the doctors who basically refuse to look at any other indicator of our well-being other than BMI. We smile even though we know that they are wrong. We smile while being passed over for promotion and raises that we deserve. We smile. We smile. We smile. And when we smile through all of this, we are creating a future and a legacy of rage and fear and depression and anxiety.
Rage. Fear. Depression. Anxiety. When we smile through the great misfortunes of our life and pretend everything is okay; when we do not get the help we need to work through these misfortunes or take the time that is necessary to do so… we eventually break. Usually, as an added awesome bonus, we break on the wrong people in the wrong place at the wrong time. That is, our children suffer for our pretending. That is, our dignity will ultimately suffer from our pretending. That is, we will eventually behave in a way that seems absolutely crazy all because we thought the right thing to do was pretend. And the legacy we leave is to our children who will do exactly as they saw us do; who will do exactly as they were told to do. “Smile though your heart is aching. Smile even though it’s breaking.” They won’t know that they are allowed to ask for help. They won’t know that they are allowed to feel their feelings. They won’t know that they can trust their own body and their own mind that is telling them something is wrong, something hurts. We will have taught them to shut those voices up… and smile.
When we find ourselves, as grown-ass women, who have been taught this horrible lesson, we can use the excuse that “this is just how my mama raised me” and continue this legacy of rage, fear, depression and anxiety. Or, we can do the work to break the cycle.
Doing the work to break this cycle might mean leaving an abusive relationship, or learning how to stop being abusive yourself. It might mean getting help managing and/or quitting an addiction. It might mean leaving a job that feels like constant revictimization. It might mean learning how to stop making impulsive, ultimately damaging choices. It might require us to not only find and start seeing a therapist but also to find the courage to tell that therapist the truth so that they can really help us. We might have to read books that make us face hard truths. We will have to have hard conversations. We will have to make ourselves vulnerable. And, above all, we will have to find true inner resilience – not the kind we fool ourselves into believing we have when we “just smile” but the kind that grows stronger the more vulnerable we allow ourselves to become—the kind our children will be healed by rather than further harmed by.
“Just” smiling is not going to help you realize your life is still “worthwhile” for very long. But, refusing to participate in our patriarchal rape culture’s insistence that women “hide every trace of sadness” just might.
Trust Your Body, Teamies! And if your body tells you something is wrong, don’t pretend that everything is okay. Pretending doesn't make you stronger or cooler or somehow more badass -- it only makes you and eventually, everyone around you, miserable.