Resting bitch face is still real and alive in 2016. From Victoria Beckham to my best friend, to Kanye West, to myself, Resting Bitch Face (RBF) causes us to naturally look exceptionally mean, even though we truly do not try to convey any sense of emotion. It's a never ending cycle of feeling warm and happy inside, only to have people endlessly question why you're so sad or angry or having to fake smile for hours (even though you are not sure you're even smiling). This persisting issue is known as resting bitch face, commonly known as RBF. To all the disbelievers of RBF who think we are truly just mean people, there is now evidence that RBF is real. Scientists have discovered the underlying cause and the reason why people view an expressionless face as a bitchy one.
Behavioral researchers Jason Rodgers and Abbe Macbeth from Noldus Information Technology, an international research and innovation firm studied RBF. They use Noldus's FaceReader, which is able to identify specific expressions that human faces make. The FaceReader maps 500 points on the human face, analyzes the image and assigns it to one of the seven basic human emotions: happiness, sadness, fear, surprise, disgust, contempt, and neutral.
While genuinely neutral faces registered about 97 percent neutrality with 3 percent of slight emotion, Rodgers and Macbeth then analyzed the faces of Kanye West, Kristen Stewart, and Queen Elizabeth, three people known for having RBF. After these faces were analyzed, the level of emotion doubled to 6 percent, mainly due to the emotion of contempt. Contempt was analyzed by having subtle facial features, such as "one side of the lip pulled back slightly, the eyes squinting a little" and a "kind of a tightening around the eyes, and a little bit of raising of the corners of the lips - but not into a smile" as described by Rogers and Macbeth, respectively.
Though the facial cues are very subtle, the phenomena of RBF occurs because the human brain detects them in the same way the FaceReader does. Although it basically is an expressionless face, something about it implies contempt. It is important to understand that while RBF is culturally related to females, the software actually showed RBF in an equal amount of men and women.
If you would like to prove that you have RBF and are really not a bitch, then you can lead people to this scientific proof. Even though your face is nearly expressionless and neutral, brains read subtle signs as contempt, leading to RBF. If this isn't enough evidence, then email your photo of your most neutral facial expression to Rogers and Macbeth to have your face analyzed by the Noldus FaceReader (email address is provided in the hyperlink above).
