Stereotypes In Amy Cunningham's Why Women Smile

“American woman’s smile often has less to do with her actual state of happiness than it does with the social pressure” (Cunningham 327).

When you stop to reflect upon the last time you smiled, was it out of genuine happiness or was it because you felt socially pressured to smile? Most likely it was a reaction out of discomfort and not an actual expression of joy. Society has pressured us to smile in order to show submission and not aggression.

Has society ceased to see how they have influenced women and how they feel the need to constantly smile? According to Amy Cunningham in Why Women Smile there has been a major influence on women and why we smile so much. For a multitude of previous generations, women have always smiled their way

Also, Cunningham states that babies smile when they have someone next to them that is enjoying all the emotion coming from the baby. When talking about this she is referring to people and their genetic set up. When looking at a smiling baby who thinks of unhappiness, nobody. This is why the author decided to add this in because, it gets an emotional response. People think of smiling as a positive emotion rather than a negative emotion. But, what if people were smiling just because they had too, several people feel the need to constantly be smiling meanwhile they are having a flood of other emotions running through their body. However, when reading this essay, you understand that throughout history, and society the role of smiling has changed. When women used to smile or laugh immoderately, society frowned upon it. Although this role has changed drastically over the last 100 years. Women are looked at disapprovingly and differently if they don’t smile rather than when they do. Author gives us an example of this when she talks about her