Langston Hugh Cunningham Why Women Smile

Have you ever paused to ponder upon your last smile? Was it one of genuine joy, or was it simply used as a means in order to avoid conflict? The text “Why Women Smile” explores these aforementioned questions in painstaking, microscopic detail. Cunningham delves deep into not only the origin of the smile but also the origin of mankind. As person with a serious disposition, this text offered me solace as Cunningham’s literature provides a rare insight into the origin of what many assume as a simple gesture of joy.

In Cunningham’s narrative, “Why Women Smile,” the author expresses why as a gender, women tend to smile more than their male counterparts. Cunningham states that as an effect of evolution, women bare their teeth as a sign of submission and to placate a rival (np). Therefore, a smile was used as an instrument of survival and not as an expression of genuine joy. Scientists noted in a recent study, that female doctors received higher ratings than their male professional counterparts. In order to discover why patients bestowed greater scores upon female doctors during evaluations, the scientists, strongly focussed on the women

It is to my belief that if we as a society were to consistently display our true emotions, many avoidable problems would dissipate. Humanity has evolved an odd pressure on its members to smile when facing a challenging situation rather than to confront the obstacle head on and to resolve it in a much more faster and efficient way. It has become all too common to “grin and bare it” rather than to deal with an unsightly situation head on. Instead of smiling, why is it that most people refuse to effectively deal with their emotions instead of suppressing them. It is unhealthy to suppress one’s true feelings in such a way for so long, that it is almost inevitable that an explosion of repressed emotion to