Nothing to smile about

In an effort to facilitate identification, Canadian authorities have recently banned smiling in passports. In order to get a valid passport in Canada, two photographs bearing "neutral expressions" must be submitted. The new law took effect on Aug. 15, but there is a two-month "smiling amnesty" for those who had mailed in happy photographs before they heard of the new law. Canadian authorities are somewhat flexible on the issue. \n"We have already received photos with small smiles that we are ready to accept," Suzanne Meunier, a spokeswoman with the passport office, told the Agence France-Presse. \nThis bit of news is amusing but not overly important: The aim is not to eliminate smiling as a social concept but rather to address security concerns, since the new law also includes hats, hair pieces and head coverings for women. Yet it was still newsworthy enough to be reported by most Canadian and several American newspapers. \nWhy? Because smiling is ingrained in our culture and banning it in pictures is tantamount to shutting down Wrigley Field or pulling all apple pies off store shelves. Even though native New Yorkers, when confronted with a smiling stranger, understand that this is either a maniac or a tourist and try to hurry past this person lest they become engaged in conversation, this tends to be the exception that proves the rule. \nSmiling permeates our society like an insidious viral strain. Strangers, bumper stickers, talk show hosts all urge you to smile. A restaurant owner spent 15 minutes explaining to me the relationship between smiling and tip percentages. On parting he said, "See you on Tuesday -- and bring your smile." \nIs smiling a tangible commodity?\nEveryone has heard the Polyannaish dictum that it takes 74 muscles to frown but only two muscles to smile. Good luck activating those two muscles when your professor hands back your paper with a D+ etched on the last page. Beyond that, people are having a hard time distinguishing between genuine heartfelt smiles or a forced grin (the waiter's kind). \nThe Financial Times ran an article by Jerome Burne explaining that there are 18 types of smiles and only one of them is genuine. The latter is called the Duchenne smile and uses two sets of muscles, the zygomatic around the mouth and the orbicularis around the eyes. A good cheat detector also watches for only the left side of the face to be activated when someone is faking a smile. In a genuine smile, the whole face is engaged. (If you give your dad yet another snowman tie for Christmas, watch carefully to see whether he is giving you a "left" smile of gratitude).\nMy cynicism may be colored by my upbringing in a socialist country, where smiling was not only far from being de rigor like it is in the United States, but was viewed with a great deal of suspicion. The general attitude was: What exactly is there to smile about, when my nutty mother would bob into a crowded elevator and announce -- beaming from ear to ear -- "Good morning, comrades!"?\nThe baffled Soviet workers around her would squeeze themselves into the sides of the elevator to avoid catching whatever it was she had.\nCertainly there is nothing wrong with smiling. Whether someone chooses to smile in the face of adversity or because he or she is on candid camera -- it is that person's decision. But I, for one, agree with Dr. Barbara Held, the author of "Stop Smiling, Start Kvetching" (Griffin, 2001), that hearing the phrase "grin and bear it," adds insult to the injury of having to bear it in the first place.