This one comes to us from Bronwen Newcott:
Memed, laughed at, and dropped in conversation for the past few years, RBF has taken on new life as the public, including scientists, have jumped into the mix. RBF: Resting Bitch Face (alternatively known as “bitchy resting face” which came from a parody Public Service Announcement in 2013.) is a “condition” of looking angry, bothered, or irritated when one’s face is at rest.
In August 2015, The New York Times published an article called, “I’m Not Mad. That’s Just My RBF” in which they explored the sexist implications of the term. Women, in general, are expected to smile more than men, so they are the ones — beginning with celebrities — most quickly pegged with RBF and, often, assumed to be bitches in general. Just last February, The Washington Post published an article “Scientists have discovered what causes resting bitch face” discussing behavioral researchers Macbeth and Rogers’s latest findings. These scientists implemented a sophisticated tool called FaceReader to analyze the expressions of hundreds of photographed faces. RBF was identified in the faces that showed traces of contempt. Their findings also state that Kanye is not actually the only man to “suffer from” RBF, but that women and men exhibit it equally. Culturally, unfortunately, the term continues still to be used primarily for women.
I have had my fair share of laughs about RBF. I guffawed to discover its being discussed seriously and have cracked plenty of RBF jokes, myself. The whole phenomenon, though, has also given me pause. RBF may be genetic, the absence of botox, the sag of aging, but what it’s most made me think about is who we actually are when we’re at rest.
Socially, we can name when we’re a “bitch face” — it sounds funny and can be comically accurate. There are other states, just as real and accurate though, that we would never say out loud. Few of us would claim being “resting sad heart” or “resting in-dread,” “resting self loathing” or “resting bored of life.” These terms tend to kick up a sense of pity and a quick distancing from others, even from ourselves. They are mildly (to severely) embarrassing.
Maybe this is why so few of us rest. At rest, we meet our faces.
Perhaps in this way, RBF is doing us a favor, reminding us that there are parts of us that surface between our efforts to meet people’s eyes, to laugh over lunch, to smile confidently during a presentation. There are parts of us waiting to be named.
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3 responses to “RBF: What Has It Brought Us?”
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I have resting jerk face, but I’m also kind of a jerk so it could read pretty accurately. However, I could just be daydreaming. Like during Sunday school this last week when I thought I saw something scrolled in elvish at the bottom of my Starbucks cup. I was imagining that I would have to put together a fellowship consisting of other people in the room to help me travel to Seattle in order to destroy the cup. The only person I could definitively use was a lawyer, because I thought threatening legal action against the forces of evil would be my strongest defense( there was also a short stocky guy that I thought would probably volunteer his axe). Then I started imaging an over litigious middle earth and started chuckling to myself. I probably looked insane. I might also suffer from resting maniac face.
Dear Cuban Sandwich Crisis: your comment is the platonic ideal of the form: one paragraph of pure poetry. I salute you.
On why we don’t rest, a tidbit from Tim Keller: http://www.gospelinlife.com/work-and-rest-5314