Clearing the air: It is not OK to tell a woman to smile

Gender-based street harassment is nothing new; women have been subjected to generations of cat-calling, aggressive and controlling behavior, and unwelcome compliments and attention. What is new are the campaigns targeting this behavior.

Tatyana Fazlalizadeh of Brooklyn, New York, began an art series in the fall of 2012 titled Stop Telling Women to Smile. "This project takes women’s voices, and faces, and puts them in the street - creating a bold presence for women in an environment where they are so often made to feel uncomfortable and unsafe."

I know many men reading this will say, "Wait a minute! Men get harassed, too!" While that statement is true, it is not nearly as much. In a 2014 survey, 65 percent of all women had experienced street harassment while just 25 percent of men had similar experiences. This harassment takes many forms, such as cat calls, honking, whistling, sexual comments, vulgar gestures, touching, following and rape. Not every woman's experience is the same, but almost every woman will experience it.

Why is it not a taboo already? Harassment of women motivated by gender and sexism is still not socially unacceptable just because it has been portrayed as complimentary, a joke, or only a trivial annoyance. But when women are being stopped and asked to smile on a daily basis by more than just one or two people from the time they leave their house to the time they get to their destination, that is a little more than trivial. There is even a term for a woman's expression when it appears unhappy or anything less than cheerful: Resting bitch face. Look it up on Google and tell me what you see. If you saw endless pictures of women, you are correct. There is no such thing as a resting bitch face for men. It is called their face.

Women have now been given an identity when they do not smile. Why is this term only used for women? I believe that, because it is not aesthetically pleasing to men, they deemed it unacceptable and something to be ashamed of. Who are you to tell me what to do or how to come across? Women do not owe men the pleasure of responding to their unwanted compliments, cat calls or otherwise. I am not here for you. If my resting face looks mean or aggressive, so what. It is my face, my body, my attitude, my right. Just because I do not have a smile on my face 24/7 does not mean I am rude, angry, upset, etc. It simply means I am not doing something so I look prettier or make anyone but myself happy.

So next time you see a woman walking down the street with a straight face, do nothing. Crazy concept, huh?

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED FOR THE ODYSSEY