Why Do People Keep Telling Nicola Peltz To 'Smile'?

Nicola Peltz was the belle of the ball at her to Brooklyn Beckham this weekend, with fans full losing it over her hair, makeup and jaw-dropping dress. 

But in a darker corner of the internet, some of the comments thrown her way have been less than flattering. 

In particular, Nicola's ‘smile’ has been a topic of discussion for the model on social media for quite some time now, with some apparently taking offence to the fact that the 27-year-old ‘​​doesn't really smile for pictures’.

“Wonder why Nicola Peltz doesn't really smile for pictures... she's beautiful no matter what but she should smile a little,” one person wrote on Twitter. 

"She never smiles lol not even on her wedding,” another added.

So why the obsession over what Nicola does with her face, we hear you ask?

Plus-size activist Lindsay McGlone believes that the discourse around Nicola’s smile is a tale as old as time.

“It's a common phrase: 'smile, it might never happen' or even more so, 'crack a smile love'," Lindsay says.

“I think the reason people are telling Nicola Peltz to smile more is because she is in the public eye, and the general public has a sense of entitlement over how Nicola should act or be when in reality we don't.”

The social media fixation on Nicola’s smile begs the question: why do people think they’re owed smiles from women? To this, Lindsay blames a long-standing ‘ideology’. 

“Society has shaped its belief that a woman should be pleasant and inviting, nourishing and kind and therefore believe that a smile means all those things," Lindsay continues.

“If we as women smile on cue, we're feeding into that ideology.”

This ideology, in Lindsay’s opinion, is a more women-focused one, "because it’s, more often than not, cisgender men who are telling [other] people to smile".

“Men have a belief that is deeply rooted that women are to appease a male's appetite,” Lindsay explains. “The idea that a woman would not smile and look 'gracious and inviting' is very hard for a man to fathom. Women don't owe you anything, not even a smile.”

In recent moments, however, women have been reclaiming their ‘smiles’ (or rather, lack thereof), with the ‘resting b**** face’ movement which has graced social media.

Celebrities like Anna Kendrick and even Nicola Peltz’s mother-in-law, Victoria Beckham, have poked fun at their own natural facial expressions. 

Lindsay believes that the ‘resting b**** face’ movement ‘has actually given some power back to women.’

“I'd much rather own my own facial expression than someone dictate how I look, so if that be branded a resting b**** face... so be it!”, Lindsay tells us.