One of the first things new people in my life notice about me is how pissed off I look a lot of the time. My resting bitch face is one of my most famous calling cards (others being my gold hoop earrings as well as my velour tracksuit that I got on sale for $6 at JCPenny and sport regularly), and I've been known to have a look so cold that people can't look at my face for more than a few seconds without feeling like they have done something wrong. It's just what my face looks like when I am not overwhelmed by another emotion. I could very well be thinking about what I should make for dinner while also sporting an expression that might make people assume I am plotting a murder.
The face is pretty great. People don't hand me fliers on my walk to class, I never get asked to sign a petition for something I don't care about, and many people generally assume that I'm a moody brat before they even get to know me (see, this saves a lot of us time, because I AM a moody brat, and it's best to know this from the very beginning).
Scientists have not been able to fully understand how my resting bitch face came to be, but I have a theory of my own that we should all take some time to explore:
Protection
On an extremely serious note, women get yelled at on the street by men while they are minding their own business multiple times a day without fail. What's more annoying is the fact that most of us have gotten so used to it that it barely puts a blip on our radar whenever it happens.
I use my resting bitch face to protect myself when I walking alone anywhere, and I believe that it may have developed because of this precise reason. Whoever is yelling at me tends to shut up as soon as they see my expression, which saves me a lot of grief. I wear this look on my face naturally, without even thinking about it, and it actually works as a defense mechanism.
Last week, I was walking to a party by myself. I saw a group of men sitting on the roof of their house, and I knew that I was going to be harassed on the way to my final destination.
"There goes a fucking white whale," one shouted down at me while the rest of his friends laughed in my direction.
Shouting comments on my weight loud enough for the entire block to hear turned my normal resting bitch face into a next level resting bitch face. I turned to the men mocking me, my expression only illuminated by the phone screen in my hand.
"Oh shit man...I think she has a gun," said one of the rooftop members. None of them yelled anything else at me for the duration of my walk. Of course, I had no weapons on me, but that is the beauty of my natural resting bitch face. It IS my weapon, and it protects me from assholes on a regular basis. My resting face evolved with my constant anger towards men, thus creating the famous resting bitch face that has been with me since high school.
Having such a gift does come with downfalls. People always think I'm angry at them, that I am not having a good time, or that I'm snotty and stuck up. Men still find a way to harass me by using my expression in their favor, encouraging me to 'smile more' because I'm 'too pretty to look to angry'. Every great superpower comes with it's own set of complications, I suppose.
