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By David Futrelle
So the latest trend in plastic surgery. according to the New York Post, is women giving their so-called Resting Bitch Faces a little surgical pick-me up, turning their frowns upside down with the help of strategically placed Botox and fillers.
Apparently some women feel such pressure to keep a smile on their face — even, or perhaps especially, when they’re in uncomfortable situations — that they want their lips permanently fixed into what one patient described to the Post as not a “Joker smile” but a “pleasant resting look.”
Weird that there’s no similar pressure on men to get rid of their Resting Jerk Faces.
In any case, plastic surgeons interviewed by the Post said there’s been a big uptick in requests for the anti-bitch-face procedure in recent years.
“This is actually a common request from patients — I get several each week,” says Dr. David Shafer, a double board-certified plastic surgeon and medical director of Shafer Plastic Surgery & Laser Center in Midtown. ….
The procedure takes about 10 to 20 minutes, costs between $500-5,000, with top docs, depending on the number of shots. It typically lasts up to two years.
Although the term [Resting Bitch Face] entered the cultural lexicon about six years ago, requests for the procedure “more than doubled” over the last year, says Shafer. …
“The worse the ‘bitch face,’ the more effective the Botox,” says Shafer. “If you always look dumpy, or unfriendly … people are going to react to you differently.”
The procedure works, the Post says, by injecting “hyaluronic acid dermal fillers” into specific areas around the mouth and “underneath [patients’] lips to plump and re-angle their mouths.” Botox is also used in some cases.
Don’t anyone tell the MGTOWs about this. They’ll denounce it as a new form of female deception even worse than makeup.
The policing of women’s facial expressions isn’t just a gender issue either. Its also a racial one. (I’m a Black woman so I don’t know if this is an issue for Latinas or Asian women.) So, just leaving this here:
—– https://www.dailydot.com/via/resting-bitch-face-rbf-black-people/
I have, throughout most of my life, remained fortunately unbothered by people telling me to smile. I can recount maybe three or four instances in my 40+ years of living. I’m pretty sure I have RBF, but no one seems brave enough to bother me about it. My little sister, on the other hand, has a face that regularly prompts strangers, (ironically, it’s mostly women) to ask her if something is wrong.
I have male Resting Bitch Face (Resting Bastard Face? Resting Bollocks Face?) Like @galanx‘s relatives-in-law I’ve had people come up to me and ask what’s wrong in a concerned tone of voice, especially when I was younger. I also can’t smile voluntarily: if people want to take a photo of me where I’m not sporting a frightening death-rictus or a completely neutral expression, they have to catch me mid-laugh at a joke or something.
(I also have chronic headaches that are pretty much unresponsive to meds so the doctors are now talking about a course of Botox injections to kill some of the nerves. I can’t say I’m looking forward to that ☹️)
I think I must have Resting Jerk Face, because people apologise to me when there’s really no need. Like, I’ll be walking along the street, and a stranger will apologise for passing within a metre of me. Maybe I need to get a t-shirt which says “if I look unhappy, it’s just weltschmerz, not you”.
On the other hand, recently a woman approached me in the office, and said “I need some help, and you have a friendly face, so I’ll ask you”. This was so unexpected that I think I stammered.
In other news about faces, when my boyfriend and I are out on the street, babies stare at him. They might look at me first, but they don’t stare at me. I don’t see them staring at others. No, they stare at him. There’s something about his energy (upbeat, outgoing, sense of humor) that babies groove on.
@ Kat – babies know what’s up. It’s uncanny.
Nothing for Resting Perv Face either. You know, that permanent leer too many guys have when they look at women.
Isn’t this against the comments policy? I find it fucking disturbing.
Like hell I’m gonna belive the “not authoritarianism” in the nick…
@Beyond Ocean
*checks comments policy*
Yup, looks like a pretty clear violation to me. For now, I’ll be kind and extend the benefit of the doubt that maybe they didn’t read the comments policy, but if they make another comment like this I’ll email David about it.
Saying you’re not authoritarian is like saying you’re not racist: if you have to say it, it probably means that you are.
@Disciplinarianism_Not_Authoritarianism
Your comment is in violation of the comments policy. For now, I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you didn’t know that, and give you a link to the comments policy. Please read and follow it if you plan to continue commenting here.
Claims to oppose conservatives, but wants people who don’t quite meet their ideology to be worked to deaths in gulags…
Sounds like we have another tankie, folks!
That was my initial reaction as well. But don’t tankies claim that gulags were like extended vacation resorts?
@Naglfar
I feel it’s kind of a comparable thing like how some people have usernames like “Truthseeker” or the like and yet peddle blatant lies and propagandist falsehoods. I’m sadly familiar with that kind of trend.
@Allandrel
It’s kind of ironic given that the same people making right wing Neo-reactionary waffles about “Gulags” tend to be the same folks who advocate for “for profit” prisons despite that sort of system being inherently predatory and rife for abuse. But when you think about it: aren’t “for profit” prisons just Gulags by means of Capitalist plutocracy?
@Beyond Ocean
I think it’s much like when conservatives refer to the concentration camps for child refugees as “like summer camp,” but other times say that the children need to be punished.
There’s a mask of “we’re not doing anything bad, honest,” but sometimes the mask slips.
You see this all the time with the anti-abortion crowd. They start off going on about “saving the baybeez,” but engage with one long enough and they’ll admit that they view pregnancy as a punishment for a woman daring to have unauthorized sex.
Or my favorite, the “every fertilized embryo is a human being with rights,” followed by legislation that resulted in the destruction of thousands of fertilized embryos. When called on the discrepancy, one of the legislators involved flat out said it wasn’t relevant because “there’s no woman involved,” i.e. admitting that it was about punishing and controlling women, and all that talk about embryos as “precious innocent baybeez” was BS to justify punishing and controlling women.
@Allandrel
I don’t encounter many tankies in day to day life, but I do encounter a fair number of anti choice people. I’ve tried arguing, and most of them have, like you said, eventually cracked and revealed that it is punishment for women. I may have told this story before, but it bears repeating.
I was talking to a conservative colleague once and he mentioned that he thought abortion was ok in cases of rape. I pushed further and asked why the embryo wasn’t a person then but was a person if it was through consensual sex. He thought about it for a minute, and said that she shouldn’t have been having sex if she couldn’t support a baby, without ever answering my question about how he could simultaneously believe that embryos were and were not people depending on circumstances. My guess is he didn’t actually believe that in either circumstance, he just wanted to punish women. Conservative hypocrisy in action.
New rule: The more you have to tell people how X-ish you are, the more likely it is that you’re the opposite of X-ish.