Women’s Day dawns, as feminists vow not to smile

OPINION:

Here’s a campaign that ought to go over big: Women the world over are taking their “Day Without a Woman” pledge so seriously that some are vowing not only to skip work — but also to do so with stony faces.

That’s right, the new trending treatment the unhappy progressive-slash-socialist woman can give the men in her world as punishment for all their supposed bigoted, misogynist ways is to refuse to smile.

It’s a solidarity sister thang, and if you’re a guy, you just won’t get it.

But the line of logic from the left is this: Women are treated as second-class citizens. One way men dominate women is to tell them to smile. So women, rebelling against the sexism and as part of International Women’s Day festivities, have signed on to giving not just the silent treatment — via mass strikes from the work places — but also the frowny faces.

“From the time you are small, as a woman you are encouraged to put on a friendly face,” one Maryland female activist explained to the Washington Post.

So, the thought process goes, why not shed the fake smiles — a la a 1960s-style Burn the Bra spirit?

Here’s a reason: because it’s lame.

You know, amid the bombastic, over-the-top call for women to quit smiling, there is a point: telling someone to smile simply to put on a pretty face is condescending.

And it is something that women have probably heard more then men.

But then again — who really cares?

It’s not a command at gun-point, right?

Here’s a sample solution, beginning with The Man’s Command and ending with The Woman’s Reply.

He: “Smile.”

She: “Bite me.”

That’s just one scenario; feel free to edit accordingly, in your own words.

But really, the problem with striking the smile from one’s face as some sort of protest movement is the same problem inherent in the striking of one’s job as a show of solidarity for women’s rights: they’re surface dramas.

They’re acts taken by people who aren’t really facing the truths of modern day living, and who can’t quite come out of a past that’s been pretty much put to rest. Fact is, equal rights are here, at least in America.

Smiling more or less isn’t going to impact the fate of those right either way. It’s not going to swing the pendulum closer to freedom — or farther away.