How Women Smile Summary
In “How Women Smile”, Anna Cunningham informs her readers that a women smiling is largely forced by societal pressure. A smile starts out involuntarily as babies, used to make a connection and please another person, smiling for pleasure comes later (173). Cunningham speaks of this pressure from a person stance as well as observation, family members and acquaintances expect smiles so often that they will question you if you are not smiling. Women smile to hide pain, to alleviate others discomfort, to show deference to others. They have been steered into believing this is the way they need to look or behave through decades of advertising, television shows, literature and even paintings. Cunningham’s essay asks us to think about why a woman not