NOTICE THIS: Do You Have Resting Bitch Face? Because Your Face Might Be Telling Stories Your Mouth Never Told
The Funny, Uncomfortable Truth About Facial Expressions, Body Language, Self-Love and Learning to Mind Your Face — By QueenB.Divine
NOTICE THIS… Do you have resting bitch face? You know, that face you make when you're doing absolutely nothing, thinking absolutely nothing terrible, and somebody walks up to you and asks, "What's wrong?" Nothing. Absolutely nothing. I was sitting here minding my business, enjoying my own little world, and apparently my face has decided to announce that I'm disappointed in the entire human race. Have you ever had that happen? Or better yet, have you ever been listening to somebody tell you a story and your face reacts before your brain has had a chance to remind it to behave? Oh, I have. And let me tell you, my face has gotten me into conversations I never intended to have.
Anyway, before we get into all this facial nonsense, how are you? How's life treating you? Have you looked at yourself in the mirror today? And I don't mean checking whether your hair is behaving, whether your eyebrows are still where you left them or whether you have something stuck between your teeth. I mean really looking at your face. The face you carry around all day. The one everybody else gets to see while you're busy living inside your head. Because I've discovered something rather interesting about mine. My face apparently has its own personality, and sometimes it doesn't bother consulting me before speaking.
I could be sitting across from somebody having a perfectly lovely conversation. I'm listening. I'm interested. I'm being compassionate. And then they tell me something that catches me off guard. Maybe it's a story about something they did, a decision they made or some ridiculous situation they've gotten themselves into. And before I can even process what they've said, my eyebrows have climbed halfway up my forehead, my eyes have widened and my mouth has formed a silent expression that clearly says, What in the hell were you thinking?
Meanwhile, inside my head, I'm thinking, Oh, that's interesting. I wonder how that made them feel.
But does my face communicate that?
Absolutely not.
My face has already held a courtroom hearing, questioned the witness and delivered a verdict. All without my permission.
And that's when I started realizing that sometimes the expression we wear doesn't necessarily match the emotion we're feeling. You can be perfectly content and look miserable. You can be concentrating and look angry. You can be listening carefully and appear judgmental. You can even be having a wonderful day and still look like somebody just told you the price of groceries has doubled again.
Which, come to think of it, might actually explain a few of our facial expressions these days.
Now, resting bitch face is a popular expression for a neutral face that other people interpret as angry, annoyed or unfriendly. It isn't a medical condition, and it certainly doesn't mean somebody is actually miserable. Some people naturally have facial features or resting expressions that others read a certain way. The position of the mouth, eyebrows and eyes can all influence how an expression is perceived. And here's the interesting part: the person doing the interpreting can get it completely wrong.
That's right. Just because somebody looks annoyed doesn't mean they're annoyed. And just because somebody looks happy doesn't mean they're happy either.
Our faces are part of how we communicate, but they aren't perfect translators of what's going on inside us.
And this is where I think we get ourselves into trouble.
Have you ever told somebody something personal and watched their expression change? Maybe their eyebrows went up. Maybe their lips tightened. Maybe they looked away for a second. Suddenly you're thinking, Oh God, they think I'm ridiculous. I shouldn't have said anything. Why did I open my mouth?
And the funny thing is, they might not have been judging you at all.
They might have been trying to understand what you said. They might have remembered something from their own life. They might have been distracted by a thought. Or maybe their face just naturally looks like it's reviewing a very disappointing restaurant menu.
But you've already taken that little expression and turned it into an entire story about yourself.
Isn't that something?
We spend so much time worrying about what other people think of us that sometimes we start making up their opinions based on nothing more than the way their eyebrows moved.
And I know this because I've been on both sides of that conversation.
I've been the person whose face reacted too quickly, and I've been the person wondering what somebody else's expression meant.
So I started paying attention.
Not because I wanted to become some perfectly polished person who walks around smiling like a toothpaste commercial. Good Lord, can you imagine? Somebody tells you their car broke down, their dog ate the couch and their husband forgot their anniversary, and there you are grinning like you've just won a lifetime supply of chocolate.
No, thank you.
I'm talking about something I like to call resting positive face.
And no, that doesn't mean forcing a smile onto your face until your cheeks start filing complaints.
To me, resting positive face means learning to relax my expression, soften some of that unnecessary tension and become more aware of what my face might be communicating when I'm not deliberately trying to communicate anything at all.
It's not about pretending to be happy. It's about being present.
Because I've noticed that sometimes my mind can be doing seventeen cartwheels while my face is telling the person in front of me that I'm thoroughly unimpressed with their existence.
And that's not always fair to them.
So I've been practicing something simple.
I look in the mirror.
Now, before you start thinking I've developed some enormous love affair with my reflection, let me explain. I'm not standing there admiring myself for twenty minutes like the evil queen in Snow White. I'm just taking a moment to notice what my face actually looks like when it's relaxed.
What do my eyebrows do when I'm thinking? Does my forehead tighten when I'm concentrating? Am I clenching my jaw without realizing it? Do I look different when I'm tired? What happens to my expression when I hear something surprising?
Sometimes I make a few faces on purpose just to see how dramatically my features can change.
And let me tell you, there are expressions I make that should probably come with a warning label.
But it's an interesting little self-awareness exercise.
You begin to recognize how your face moves, how tension shows up and how your expressions might affect the way you communicate.
And there's another benefit. Sometimes when I notice that my jaw is tight or my forehead is scrunched up, I realize I've been carrying tension I hadn't even acknowledged.
That doesn't mean every facial expression reveals some deep emotional secret. Sometimes we're simply tired, concentrating or reacting to the light in our eyes. But noticing tension can be a useful reminder to check in with ourselves.
Which brings me to one of my favourite little activities.
People-watching.
Oh, I love people-watching.
And before somebody calls security, let me clarify. I'm talking about sitting somewhere public, minding your own business and casually observing the wonderful, ridiculous theatre of human behaviour.
A shopping mall is fantastic for this. A park. A coffee shop. Somewhere you can sit with a book, enjoy your coffee and watch the world go by without making anybody feel uncomfortable.
Because the goal isn't to stare at people like you're conducting a secret investigation.
Please don't do that.
Nobody wants to look up from their sandwich and discover a stranger examining their facial muscles like they're a rare species.
But when you casually observe people interacting, you start noticing how much communication happens without words.
You see somebody light up when they recognize a friend. You see a parent give their child that particular look that somehow communicates an entire paragraph without saying a single word. You see couples laughing, people concentrating, somebody looking confused at a self-checkout machine and another person staring at their phone as though it's personally offended them.
And you begin to understand how much expression, posture and movement contribute to the way we interpret each other.
But here's something important I've learned: observing an expression isn't the same as knowing what somebody feels.
A face can offer clues, but it isn't a lie detector.
We can't reliably determine whether somebody is telling the truth simply by looking at their eyes, their mouth or the way they move their eyebrows. People express emotions differently, and nervousness doesn't automatically mean dishonesty. Sometimes an honest person looks uncomfortable, and sometimes somebody telling a lie looks perfectly relaxed.
So while I enjoy noticing people's expressions, I try not to turn those observations into conclusions about their character.
Because I wouldn't want somebody doing that to me.
Imagine somebody looking at my resting face and deciding I'm a miserable old bat when I'm actually sitting there thinking about what I'm going to make for dinner.
Although, depending on what's left in the refrigerator, the miserable expression might be justified.
And this is where self-love comes into the conversation.
Because learning about your own expressions isn't supposed to become another reason to criticize yourself.
We already spend enough time worrying about how we look.
Our wrinkles. Our skin. Our hair. Our weight. Our smiles. Our age. Our faces in photographs. Our faces on video calls. Our faces when somebody accidentally opens the front camera on the phone.
Oh, that front camera.
There's nothing quite like accidentally seeing yourself from underneath your chin at seven o'clock in the morning to remind you that technology has absolutely no compassion.
But seriously, I don't want anybody walking away from this conversation thinking they need to fix their face.
Your natural expression isn't a character flaw.
You don't owe the world a permanent smile. You don't have to look cheerful to make everybody else comfortable. And you certainly shouldn't feel responsible for every assumption another person makes about you.
What I am suggesting is that a little self-awareness can help us communicate with more intention.
If somebody is sharing something important with me, I can make an effort to listen without letting every surprising thought immediately jump onto my face. I can ask questions instead of assuming. I can soften my expression when it feels natural. And if somebody misreads me, I can simply explain what I actually meant.
Sometimes a few honest words are worth more than a hundred carefully controlled facial expressions.
And here's another thing.
If you find yourself constantly worrying about what your face is doing, you're probably missing the conversation happening right in front of you.
So don't overdo it.
This isn't about becoming some kind of facial-expression traffic controller.
It's about recognizing that our bodies, our emotions and our communication habits are connected in interesting ways. Sometimes we're aware of what we're expressing, and sometimes we're not.
And that brings me back to something I say all the time.
Self-love and self-care will get you there, but you've got to show the work.
Sometimes that work is learning how to communicate better. Sometimes it's recognizing that you've been tense all morning. Sometimes it's noticing that you're assuming somebody dislikes you when they've barely said two words.
And sometimes it's simply laughing at yourself because your eyebrows have once again decided to participate in a conversation without being invited.
I think that's one of the most wonderful parts of getting older and paying attention to life. You begin to recognize little habits you never noticed before.
The way you react. The way you listen. The way you carry tension. The way you interpret other people.
And instead of immediately judging yourself for those things, you can get curious about them.
That's what I'm trying to do.
I'm learning that I don't have to react to everything. I don't have to express every passing thought. I don't have to assume somebody's face is telling me exactly what's happening in their mind.
And I don't have to spend my day worrying about whether my own face is behaving itself.
I can simply become a little more aware.
A little more compassionate.
And perhaps a little less likely to let my eyebrows ruin a perfectly good conversation.
So here's a little exercise for you today. The next time you look in the mirror, don't immediately search for something wrong with your appearance. Just notice your face. Relax your jaw. Let your forehead soften. Take a moment to appreciate the person looking back at you.
And the next time somebody tells you something surprising, notice your first reaction before you let it take over the conversation.
You might discover that your face has been doing a whole lot of talking while you've been trying to listen.
And if somebody asks why you look so miserable when you're actually having a perfectly lovely day, you can always tell them, "I'm not miserable. This is just my face taking a coffee break."
Because sometimes humour is the best way to handle a misunderstanding.
So now I'm curious. Do you have resting bitch face, resting positive face, or one of those faces that tells everybody exactly what you're thinking before you've even opened your mouth?
And have you ever had somebody completely misunderstand your expression?
I'd love to hear your story, because I have a feeling there are a whole lot of us walking around with faces that are far more outspoken than we intended.
Remember, your face doesn't have to be perfect. Your expressions don't have to please everybody. And your worth certainly isn't determined by how approachable somebody thinks you look.
Take care of you, be kind to the face looking back at you in the mirror, and for goodness' sake, give those eyebrows a day off once in a while.
— QueenB.Divine
NOTICE THIS… Sometimes your face tells a story, but that doesn't mean everybody is reading it correctly. Self-love begins when you stop judging the cover and start understanding the person inside.
If you enjoyed this little conversation, come join me on The Self Love Daily Channel with QueenB.Divine for more raw, real and occasionally ridiculous conversations about self-care, self-love, human behaviour and the everyday things we don't always stop to notice.
And while you're taking a little break from the world, visit CellPhellow.com, where I create handmade phone resting places and digital self-care resources that encourage us to put down the screen and reconnect with ourselves.
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