The command to “Smile!” is horrible even without the “you’d be prettier” garbage. Men who say “Smile!” are really just saying “I don’t like the look on your face. Change it!” As if a friendly countenance is the rent we owe them to exist in the world.

An older man (not elderly, just older than I was at the time) accosted me in a hospital elevator with “Smile! Nothing can be all that bad!” I happened to be on the way up to the labor ward to be induced because my 20-week fetus had just died. What lay ahead for me was hours of labor and the stillbirth of my son. I will never forget how that boob felt entitled to police the expression on my face. I didn’t have the energy to knock his teeth down his throat, which he truly deserved. I just stared straight ahead and said, “I am a walking tomb.”