A real smile always beats a perfect pose
Since I can remember, my parents have always followed the same set of cues for every photo taken of my siblings and me: lean in, act like you love each other and smile with teeth. The ambitious third child I was, I occasionally challenged the rules by striking a pose or holding up bunny ears behind my brother or sister, but the command I never pushed back on was to smile with teeth. As I got older, those early photo habits taught me to embrace moments of joy and smile big without thinking twice.
To better set the scene, in middle school I was a sporty, ponytail, patterned-leggings, pink-braces type of kid. When I turned 13, my parents finally let me download Instagram – an app I had been begging for after seeing my older sister and her friends tag each other in posts and laugh over shared videos. I wanted to feel included and accepted by my peers, like most middle schoolers navigating the mix of insecurity and excitement that comes with growing up.
Almost immediately, I realized that the “right” way to smile online looked completely different from the ear-to-ear grin I had been trained to perform. The first thing I noticed others doing was smiling with their lips sealed and their faces relaxed. This pose made them seem calm and poised, and I compared this idea to the pictures I had taken. Most of my pictures were selfies with friends, where my smile was so big that my cheeks puffed up and my eyes squinted. My neon braces were on blast, and I had no sense of composure or chill-ness. Noticing this difference made me self-conscious of my smile, and so began an era of smiling without teeth.
Around this time, I also became aware of the concept of “creating an aesthetic,” or compiling photos that convey a certain type of planned image or theme. And like most girls online, that aesthetic came with its own gendered expectations – soft, calm, curated, never messy or overly expressive. To be honest, my true “aesthetic” was probably just a mix of everything I loved, but I covered this by posting pictures of pretty sunsets, the beach, a side profile of my dog and a soft smile in a café (no teeth, obviously).
While I did experience these moments and capture them with photos, they left out my favorite parts of my life at the time – my volleyball team, weekend bike rides with my dad, my love for baking and passion for playing the guitar. After all, would my followers view me the same if, instead of the coordinated sunset pics, I posted a selfie of my dad and me with helmet hair? Or a photo of my volleyball team, sweaty and in the corner of a middle school gym? And would my pink braces make me seem childish? At such a young age, I decided it was more important to preserve my image on social media than paint an accurate picture of the person I was becoming.
Smiling without teeth represented the start of a saga where I worried too much about how I was perceived. It wasn’t until high school that I began to let go of those worries. I started posting pictures with my favorite people, smiling as big as I could when I felt genuine joy, and I’m happy to say my Instagram now is a compilation of all the people and moments that matter most to me. I smile to show I’m happy, to remember a moment and to share a little bit of that joy with someone else.
Not to mention, gender norms often pressure girls and women into appearing calm, controlled and aesthetically pleasing – always put together, never “too much.” A closed-mouth smile became part of that performance. By smiling with teeth, I am redefining what it means to express happiness as a woman without filtering it through expectations of poise or prettiness. It matters far more to me to be genuinely joyful than to present a version of myself that aligns with what society tells women is “composed” or “acceptable.”
Whatever your smile looks like, embrace it and be genuine. Smiling isn’t about doing or not doing something; it’s about enjoying a moment in whatever way feels most authentic. If that’s with teeth, wonderful. If not, that’s okay too. My goal isn’t to tell the world to smile with teeth – my goal is to reaffirm that the only perception of yourself that truly matters is your own. Be yourself and smile authentically – and for me, that means with teeth.