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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.
People have complained that I frown too much (nobody’s specifically called it RBF, but I think that’s what they’re describing), but I really don’t care. When people want to take pictures with me, especially when I was younger, they always ask me to smile with teeth, but I generally refuse to smile with teeth if I smile at all. I just don’t like the way it looks for me.
@ObSidJag
Same here. If I smile, I am probably thinking about a snarky comment or an inside joke.
When reading WHTM, if I see something especially ridiculous, I make a strange facial expression that combines rolling eyes with half a nervous smile.
Thanks for that article, Surplus. Very interesting!
As for rbf the existence of the term is just pressure to be decorative and subservient all the time and I won’t stand for it.
In high school, I adopted what I considered to be a duchess face: haughty and cold. I wore this expression in the hallways between classes, and I employed it defensively, to ward off evil.
A friend of mine once spotted me when I was playing the duchess, and she said that if she didn’t know me, she would have been afraid to talk to me.
I’ve been told that my RBF is rather terrifying. I can live with that.
Great Bleeding SHIT…
I know (metaphorically speaking) this is who we are, and it’s really always BEEN who we are….
But I have to say, we looked a shitload better when we just faked it instead of slathering our self-absorbed hatred onto everything like it’s butter on a waffle….
Metaphorically speaking, we’re ugly when we’re naked….
(E.T.A., this is about MY peer group… white, xian heritage, middle/working class men)
I don’t have resting bitch face so much as resting rage face, which can be problematic. However, when I lived in SF and used to walk around a lot, it was actually useful; I naturally walk fairly quickly, and combined with my resting face, people would avoid the fuck out of me on the street.
Yay!
A combination of an unusually large lower lip and a slight underbite gives me a naturally very grumpy neutral expression. My grandmother asks me what’s wrong nearly every time she sees me because I apparently always look upset about something.
OT, but in other news, my Prime Minister did brownface when he was an impressionable young man of 30 years.
Somehow I doubt this will sink Trudeau further than SNC-Lavalin, but time will tell. How it took TIME Magazine to find this is beyond me.
Epitome, the idea of apologizing for being “Canada- centric” is so Canadian. 🙂
@Talonknife
I think my lower lip is larger than usual as well, because people tell me that my resting expression looks like I’m pouting.
@Katamount
I know that this is bad, but a bit south of you is a country where the president does worse things than that regularly.
Multiple times, as it transpires
Are there any leaders of “Western” nations who aren’t complete shitehawks?
@Naglfar – uh, that’s not particularly helpful. We’re in the beginning of an election, and this bullshit is yet another thing the cons can use to try to bury the liberals, after they’ve made hay with the SNC-Lavalin bullshit for the past what, year?
(And if you are unfamiliar with this ‘government rocking’ scandal… Why not?)
This honestly is more akin to the pussy tape than ‘nothing’, which is what you seem to be implying. This is probably going to be tied in with the performance that Trudeau put on when he visited India, and when he invited a ‘terrorist’ to come with him. (That’s in quotations because I haven’t read up on it, and what a government declares as a terrorist is not always a terrorist, so I want to be fair.)
I know the Americans are dealing with a lot, and believe me, I sympathise. But currently it’s the Canadian’s turn to be freaking out over the possibility of an Andrew Scheer government, and what that’s going to do to them.
Also remember that a bunch of provincial elections went super right, and we (in Ontario + Alberta + I think other provinces, I’m sorry, I just can’t bear looking them up right now) are dealing with a bunch of right wing bullshit.
Just saying. We’re freaking out.
@Surplus to Requirements:
I knew several pieces of that, but it was fun to see it all in one place. Though I think they missed one piece, which was that the first influx of Latinate words occurred during the Roman occupation two thousand years ago, between the first two Germanic invasions.
@epitome of incomprehensibility, Katamount:
Yes, I was hearing about that on the radio this morning. I think you’re right in that it’s hard for it to do more damage than Trudeau’s already facing, and the apology I heard sounded pretty direct, no prevaricating around and excuses like he continues to do with SNC-Lavalin.
Another woman with RBF here. I have been told by large and intimidating men that they were intimidated by me, much to my shock!
Speaking of shock, when I first started doing a lot of reading online, I was shocked to hear about women’s accounts of being accosted/bothered/approached in public. This has been a rare occurrence for me throughout my life, for which I am now very grateful.
Is the term “dumpy” ever used by anybody who isn’t trying to sell you something?
@Rhuu
Sorry. I don’t know much about Canadian politics (I was unaware there was an election, not totally sure what the SNC-Lavalin scandal is), and I now realize that what I said came across as insensitive. My apologies to Canadians.
I’m just dreading the possibility of another 4 years of Trump, because Joe Biden somehow is still leading in the primary and is definitely incapable of winning.
@Weasel-Rah
Yeah, dudes trying to neg you.
@Naglfar
Not cool.
Edit: didn’t see your reply before I sent this. Thanks for owning up to it.
I must have resting please-give-me-a-bible face since whenever those guys are on campus, no matter how large of a group I’m with, they will always try and talk to me. My sister tells me my resting face makes me look lost, so maybe the two are connected?
Anyway, I came across this blog recently and have been reading voraciously. Thank you all and David for being awesome <3
I know you’re dreading it. I’m dreading it too, because he has really set the bar low for the rest of the world. But that doesn’t diminish what the rest of the world is dealing with.
You have a lot on your plate to keep up with. Now imagine that, for the rest of the world, we have to both keep up with yours *and* ours.
Here’s a timeline of the scandal. It’s a pretty big deal, but also not as big a deal as the cons are trying to make it out to be…
But I might be biased, because my voting pattern is “who is likely to beat the conservatives? VOTE FOR THEM” so liberal, NDP, and even maybe the greens? are all options for me.
This is literally what the linked articles are right now. This brown-faced stuff is big news right now.
THERE’S THE EDIT TIMER!
I wanted to add a final note that on this whole world politic stage, everything just stinks. It all stinks.
Thanks for the apology, I do appreciate it!
@Rhuu, kupo, and everyone else who called me out
I recognize that what I said was wrong, and that I shouldn’t have said that. I know that it all sucks, and I shouldn’t say things that belittle other’s problems. My apologies again to anyone I offended. Thank you for the additional information, it helps me understand better so I don’t make mistakes like that again.
@Naglfar
Don’t I know it. Which is why I’m keeping focused on policies rather than personal nonsense. I live in a riding with a popular Liberal incumbent and to ensure the Tories don’t represent me, I gotta cast a ballot for him.
My fear is that the Liberals have nobody else prominent enough to represent the party going into this election except Trudeau. I think he’ll have to tough out this election, then he should immediately resign.
I remember being 16 and walking down the hall of my highschool. In my head at the moment I was thinking about how much I hated to be alive and at that exact moment on of the annoying teachers the school had saw me and said in exact words
“Smile Lain it’s not that bad” and I deadass stopped and slowly turned to him and said “you don’t know shit about shit so keep your opinions to yourself”
Needless to say I got in trouble but that was my biggest breaking point of the constant being told to smile
@Weasel-Rah:
My mom uses that to describe anyone who doesn’t dress exactly like she does. This includes all of the women on my dad’s side of the family. It’s her own special brand of classism/sexism/ableism/jealousy.
@Weasel-Rah, Yutolia
My mother uses it to describe places she doesn’t want to go. When I was a kid, she would constantly reject possible vacation destinations by calling them “dumpy”. Classism and elitism all in one.
My mother loved the idea of travel but tended to hate actually going on vacation.
Ugh, more Stepford Wives garbage. This culture. Ugh.
I don’t have “RBF” and kind of wish I did, because the way things are I basically have “Please fuck around with me, I will put up with anything” written on my face. This despite never wearing makeup and presenting as the most obvious lesbian ever.
And meanwhile so many dudes are legit terrifying the way they glower at everyone by default, but do they get pushed to have it surgically corrected? Noooo of course not. *sighs heavily*