Why Women Smile

“Hey, thanks for telling me,” with a soft voice and light smile. Does it sound familiar to you? Perhaps the response seems good and polite on the surface, but people might be very frustrating deep inside. Truly, the burden of societal expectation forbids people to share their true feeling and opinion, therefore a genuine interaction among people becomes very rare. Although the U.S. government encourages gender equality, but the society remains the same; in reality, society has a higher expectation on women over men. In the article “Why Women Smile”, Cunningham evaluates on how societal expectation and personal goal evolves women’s daily behavior; particularly she focuses on the women’s smile. It’s for the better, women weaponize their smile

There are too many good examples of female protagonists in the article, one of the best samples- Cunningham cites: “In Japan, for instance, a smile is often used to hide pain or sorrow” (371). The society loyally favors in a “happy” protagonist more than a frowning one. Believe it or not, women are highly intelligent because they manage to cover their true feeling for the societal need- she gives a smiling face whenever she needs to. Carefully, the given evidence is a logos (logical appeal); it’s a true premise and a factual evidence. There are several methods to determine a factual evidence, one of them is referring to the original article’s work cited and research the original material or reference in the library. Alternatively, the easiest way is to research the reference on the internet with scholarly search engine. All things considered, the example indeed supports writer’s general idea and the thesis. However, it is an analogy argument which it uses good reasoning and generalization to make audiences believe. Again, we should consider this evidence in different position about the inequality between Japanese and American culture, religion and belief, the Japanese women in the article might be too weak to represent the U.S. women population or to all

Due to the high performance in education, workplace and family, society expects women more than before, such as: A wife must cook “good” food for her family, give “more” respect to her husband and nurture her children “properly”. A female employee is often perceived as a careful, conservative, considerate and friendly character of others. Regardless to any nature of individual and the group, an outstanding woman constantly involves conflicts because of her need and desire; now, need evolves to basic luxury need and the desire mutates to “I must have it”. Not only men, women fight for a better home, salary, job promotion, status and many more too. In the article, Cunningham speculates women’s smile as their burdens more than a weapon: “ Woe to the waitress, the personal assistant or receptionist, the flight attendant, or any other woman in the line of public service whose smile is not offered up to the boss or client as proof that there are no storm clouds-no kids to support, no sleep that’s been missed rolling into the sunny workplace landscape” (372). On that occasion, Cunningham sounds like a victim. In comparing to their social image, women have a stronger mentality and perseverance in the reality. The emotional appeal (ethos) is wonderful, it connects audience and writer instantly, but there is a risk; some rational readers might suspect writer is an implicit bias because her article laden with too much