Here’s a little trick
Whenever things
Get a little bit thick
Just you take
it on the chin
Put on a little grin
and smile.

In one of my favorite Peanuts cartoons, Marcy tells Peppermint Patty that smiling takes less energy than frowning. Continuing to frown, Patty says, “Great. Then I’m exercising.”

As I grump my way through another day, I often think about this cartoon and increase my frown, hoping that my thighs will see a difference.

But why have I become Grumpy Smurf? I made a deal with myself as a graduate student that when I became a professor I wouldn’t become like many of my teachers. No elbow-patched blazers, no spectacles perched on the tip of my nose, and no taking myself too seriously.

I can proudly report that I own no blazers (elbow-patched or not) and that my glasses, when I remember to wear them, sit firmly on the bridge of my nose. However, I haven’t been as successful with the ‘no taking myself too seriously’ pledge.

For the first time in my academic life, I have a high stakes job. For the first time, everything I do is being watched, judged, and noted for my ever-growing tenure and promotion file.

And this scares me. And I, in turn, have been scaring everyone else.

Though I am basically happy with my life, my home, and my sole ownership of the remote, I haven’t been smiling a lot.

I decided to conduct an experiment. Before leaving for class, I stuck my fingers into my facial dimples and pushed everything up. What resulted was a goofy grin, but by the time I reached the classroom, my facial muscles relaxed and my smile was genuine.

Later on, I used the theme song from Monty Python’s Flying Circus to generate my smile. Since I only have half the tune on tape, I have to finish the song myself, blowing raspberries to imitate the tooting sound effect at the end of the song. I find this activity a most effective way to loosen up my otherwise clenched jaw and to amuse anyone who happens to be passing by.

During this very rough experiment of smiling, smiling, smiling, I found that most recipients of my smile smiled back. Tensions were lifted, sleepiness was abated, and joy was genuinely present.

After I conducted this very unscientific experiment, I decided to do a little research into the nature of smiling.

First, according to researchers, one must define the kind of smile to which one refers. One kind of smile is defined by researcher Wade C. Mackey as “an upward retraction of the corners of the mouth” (Journal of Genetic Psychology 126). (What a great pick-up line! ‘Hey baby, I dig your upward retraction of the corners of your mouth.’)

Dr. Mackey found that women are more likely to smile than men in Western cultures and that a greeting is more likely to be reciprocated if that greeting is accompanied with a smile (129). (So if you decide to use the pick-up line above, make sure you smile!)

A second type of smile, according to Duchenne de Boulogne, is “the combined contraction of the zygomatic major muscle [mouth] and the orbicularis oculi [eyes]” (Psychological Science 342). Yeah, these guys really know how to throw down at a party.

Scientific definitions aside, which is the better smile? In E.M. Forster’s novel Howard’s End, the narrator, describing Jacky, tells us that “true joy begins in the eyes” and that the eyes of Jacky were “anxious and hungry.”

I’m inclined to agree with Forster that one’s eyes do tell the story of real or fake joy.

Take the lyrics of “When Irish Eyes Are Smiling”:

There's a tear in your eye,
And I'm wondering why,
For it never should be there at all.
With such pow'r in your smile

Apparently, there’s a reason why Irish eyes can’t cry and smile at the same time. In a study conducted by Paul Ekman and Richard J. Davidson, scientists conclude that a Duchenne-type smile chemically activates the part of the brain that produces positive feelings (345).

Further, these scientists concluded that there was no difference in brain stimulation when a smile was produced either from remembering something emotionally positive or from doing what I did, pushing my fingers into my face to make myself smile.

It turns out, then, that the very act of smiling produces joy.

Now, I’m no Pollyanna, ‘the glass is half full’ kind of person. ‘Cautiously optimistic’ is probably a better way to describe me, but since I’ve been practicing my smile, I’ve noticed a difference in my attitude toward myself.

I sing the little tune from the musical play “Me and My Girl” (printed above the text of this column) and blow lots of raspberries. And who can really take him or herself too seriously when blowing raspberries? Not me, that’s for sure.