So you're just enjoying your day, not a care in the world right? But then it happens, "Are you okay? You look really pissed off?" Nope, I can promise you this is just my face.
All throughout high school I was bombarded with people telling me to look "happier" and asking why I looked so miserable. To them, I was being rude and my face was showing them that I was disinterested. But to me? I was just living life, with no intentions of being portrayed as rude or mean.
Within the next year, I would come to find that how my face was naturally was commonly known as "resting bitch face." And as of February 4, 2015, it was now public knowledge that "resting bitch face," was real according to CNN.
Journalist Jareen Imam stated at the beginning of her article, "Resting bitch face" is real, scientists say, "Good news, everyone! You can now wear your mildly discontented face with some validation. The phenomenon known as "resting bitch face" is real, according to scientists. Better yet, there's research available that could explain why some people are "throwing shade."
In October of 2015, scientists Abbe Macbeth and Jason Rogers developed a software that could analyze the underlying emotions of our most famous celebrities faces. These faces included Kanye West, Kristen Stewart, Anna Kendrick and even Queen Elizabeth the second. What did they found? These people who display RBF show "underlying levels of emotions" that can not be found in those that do not display RBF.
When putting an image of a face showing no emotion, generally scientists found that the face would be 97 percent neutral and 3 percent would be some sort of underlying emotion. Usually, the emotion would be happiness, anger, sadness, etc.
But Macbeth shares with us that, "people who have this RBF expression have double the amount of emotionality expressed." Those who with the RBF expression tend to show as high as 6 percent of emotion and that emotion is almost always of contempt. CNN tells us that the definition of contempt is, the feeling that something is worthless or deserves scorn.
Scientists share with us that, "they want to do more with the data than just identify who has RBF. They want to know why some people have it and what RBF means in terms of a person's psychology. Most important, they also want to understand why people react so negatively to a face with RBF".
Advice from both Rogers and Macbeth was that if you're wondering if you too suffer from RBF expression, check your relatives when they are just relaxing. You may never know if you're the next to deal with the neverending, "Are you mad?" questions.
