musingsonwomenshealth.com

Reflections on 40 years as a doctor in Women's Health

Is this a smile which I see before me?


There are few things that make me feel as welcome as a smile; in whatever country I’ve travelled, and into whichever city I’ve ventured, it has always seemed a welcome guide to my reception. Of course I realize a smile has as many faces as a clown; one has to be careful about its meaning, about its reliability -we all learn that as part of growing up, I suppose: ‘One may smile, and smile, and be a villain” as Shakespeare has Hamlet say to the ghost of his father. Still, it’s an interesting feature to watch on different faces. I remember even writing an essay about that a few years ago[i].

The smile with all its variations and its often misleading messages seems such a universal human feature, that it’s hard to think of it changing much over the millennia. It’s recognizable at a distance, and although its nuances may require closer scrutiny, context usually resolves any doubts as to its purpose. But, like fashion, smiles have worn different styles, different clothes in different eras.[ii] Apart from the difference in what may provoke foreign cultures to engage in smiling, there may also be chronological factors to consider. The lip smiles depicted in ancient Greek statues, for example, may not be intended to depict pleasure or happiness, but merely general health and contentment.[iii] For that matter, the ancient Romans did not distinguish between a smile and a laugh, contenting themselves with a single Latin verb – ridere – for both.[iv] And think of the French derivative: rire -to laugh, and sourire –to smile (a sort of sub-laugh).

But even more interesting, I think, are the styles of what was considered appropriate for a smile over the years. Although what we would likely agree to categorize as a ‘happy smile’ was beginning to be depicted in Western Art from at least the 13th century, it remained different from what we might see in our friends today: the smiling mouth was almost always closed. Unlike what we expect nowadays, open mouths and visible teeth had negative connotations: signs of rudeness and lower socioeconomic class. Polite people were expected to laugh with their mouths closed, although I’m not sure how successful that could be. In art, however, the open mouth ‘betrayed a loss of reason. The mouth lolling open was an accepted way of depicting the insane, but it went further than that, and encompassed the representation of individuals whose rational faculties had been placed in abeyance, by passions or base appetites. This was one reason why some of the tiny number of portraits showing white-tooth smiles are of children.’[v]

But things began to change in Art near the end of the 18th century with a ‘daring’ self-portraiture exhibited in 1787 in the annual Salon in the Louvre by Elisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun. ‘With her daughter at her knee, she graciously looks out at the viewer and smiles with decorous charm, revealing her white teeth.’ It was the birth of the modern smile.

I suspect the new look was helped by the emergence of dentistry -the term was coined in Paris in the 1720s. Smiling was less of an embarrassment if the teeth were presentable. Unfortunately, shortly thereafter, the French Revolution forced the depiction of smiles back to the old way for a while. ‘True patriotism had no time for a gesture that seemed to mock republican seriousness.’

But culture evolves, and what seemed inappropriate or rude in one era, blossoms in another. I’ve often wondered whether the act of examining one’s reflection -in a store window, say- is an act of conceit, rather than an actual concern for the appropriateness of one’s appearance. I suspect we all do it from time to time, so I’m not mentioning it as a condemnation, nor to point out something about which we need to be cautious lest others see it as arrogance. Still, it is a habit to which I found myself mildly addicted when I was in a particularly needy mood in my early days. It served no purpose, I suppose, other than identifying the owner of the reflection, validating the image as emanating from someone possessing agency, personhood. Someone worthy of an identity.

I’m not sure that I would have put it in those terms at the time, but in retrospect, I think I was more prone to self-doubt than I am now in my autumnal years; more subject to the imposter feelings of someone who had risen to professional ranks with all of its commensurate responsibilities and yet sometimes wondering how that could be. How could people not see through my insecurity; not see me as the little boy with horn-rimmed glasses and braces on his teeth hugging his dog in the black and white picture that sits quietly on my mantelpiece at home?

In those reflections I sought, perhaps, to convince myself that things had changed, but even if it was a only a fleeting glimpse of myself in the window of a store, or the shiny metal of a parked car, my anxiety was usually all too obvious. To put it another way, I was not reassured by what I saw; my brow was often furrowed, my mouth tightly shut, my eyes hardened in anticipation of the day to come, or fatigued by the hours already consumed. Actually, I’m not sure why I still felt the need to check my reflection; it did not change my mood, nor did my appearance strengthen my resolve to face what remained of the day.

But, sometimes, if I found myself on a vacation, say, or realized I was in a positive mood about something I had just done, my reflection was noticeably different. What I saw was, well, happy; what I saw was an almost unrecognizable face; what I saw was a smile.

I realize this may sound strange, but at first I was uncertain about whether my mood had changed what I’d seen, or if it was the other way around? Had the reflection, the smile I’d seen, actually changed me…?

It’s amazing how seeing someone smiling -even me- alters things. Something valuable is shared, something uplifting. Me smiling, was an epiphany, really, and I enjoyed the happy, contented feeling whenever I saw myself reflected like that; to smile was a far better course to choose, I think -a far better road.

I was reminded of the last stanza of one of my favourite poems: Robert Frost’s The Road not Taken:

It’s not just a reflection anymore: I have become the smiling face…

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

[i] https://musingsonretirementblog.com/2018/08/25/smile-and-smile-and-be-a-villain/

[ii] https://aeon.co/essays/a-history-of-the-smile-through-art-culture-and-etiquette

[iii] Ibid.

[iv] Ibid.

[v] Ibid.

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