Fix Your Face

(Contributed by Mitch Greene)

 Picture two alleys. One is very dark, damp, dingy and disgusting. The other is bright, clean, fresh and inviting.

Which do you choose? No brainer.

Let’s turn our attention to the mirror. Us.

Have you heard of this term? Resting b*tch face or RBF for short. It literally means that your face at rest looks grumpy, unhappy, unapproachable and, honestly, like everything you don’t want it to look like. Sounds just terrible, doesn’t it? The sad thing is that women in my generation say that they have an RBF like it’s a badge of honor! Like they should be proud! But let’s not forget about the men. Thankfully for me, there is no ridiculous term for the guys to describe this face, but it is still there and very present. I feel like most guys could work on smiling a lot and that includes me.

Recently a friend of mine from work told me that she scared away a customer who came to her with a question. We’ll call her Jess for this story. When I asked Jess why he was scared, she said that he saw her RBF and just walked away, pretending that he didn’t see her at all… because she was scary. Well, I asked her the obvious question: “Why didn’t you smile?” She looked like I just asked her the dumbest question in the world, and her response astonished me.

“This is just my face. I was born like this.”

What?! Are you kidding me?!

I’m terribly sorry. I didn’t realize that Jess was born with the face of Simon Cowell. I have never seen one baby that has a resting face like that. Besides, don’t babies and little kids have happy faces?!

Zig Ziglar said, “Your attitude is the inner you expressed by the outer you”. Bad attitude = RBF.

Here’s what Jess needs to learn: You are not born with b*tch face. You earn it through a whole lot of negative thinking, negative friends, and negative environment and the result – constant frowning. It becomes a habit and feels natural.

So, let’s flip this around. I challenge you to have the resting face of a happy baby. Resting happy baby face! No more #RBF, please. #RHBF!