Smiling helps us cope, enhances our health and extends our lives. We're born to smile. We even smile in the womb.
So why then do fashion models all look so miserable? Theories abound: Genuine misery due to starvation, art directors who don't want to draw attention away from the goods, attempts to seem superior (primates show teeth as a sign of submissiveness).
It doesn't make me want to run out and shop. Why would I buy clothes that depress even the model -- who, one assumes, likes clothes?
The September 27, 2015, New York Times Style Magazine was a hefty dead tree of 250 pages. On those 250 pages were printed 120 visible faces -- counting both ads and editorial. Of those 120 faces, seven were smiling. Seven.
The animated gif contains all 113 miserable faces and seven not so miserable ones.
Say cheese! Please?
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