I spent a month trying to smile like Zohran Mamdani – it’s no easy feat | Arwa Mahdawi

AAs a big fan of citizen science, I spent the last month conducting a very important experiment. Although I’m not as die-hard as American virologist Jonas Salk, who injected himself and his family with the polio vaccine before large-scale trials, this scientific investigation has led to some personal pain. You see, I’ve spent the last month trying to smile like Zohran Mamdani. This is not, as I have discovered, an easy task.

Ever since New York’s new mayor became a household name, I’ve been intrigued by his permanent smile. His detractors call him a “jihadist,” and he smiles. He meets Donald Trump and he smiles. Are some Republican lawmakers launching a campaign to investigate his path to citizenship and deport him? He continues to smile. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen him look angry.

Do his cheekbones hurt all the time, I started to wonder? Did the wind change when he smiled once, forcing his face into that position? And does smiling make him feel happy despite the fact that the world is a raging dumpster fire?

There have actually been many debates on this last point, led by people with better qualifications than me. Some studies say yes, you can smile happier, and others say no. A more recent study suggests that yes, smiling can slightly improve mood. But only to a limited extent. For example, you cannot smile your way out of depression. If only.

I can’t say for sure why Mamdani smiles all the time, but I suspect the reasons aren’t particularly encouraging. The fact is that not everyone has the right to be angry. When you’re brown or black and you grow up in a place where you’re a minority, you quickly learn that your emotions are constantly monitored. You learn that even though white men’s anger is sometimes considered right, your rage is always wrong. And you learn that you don’t even have to be angry for people to perceive you that way. According to a study by the American Psychological Association, for example, prospective teachers appear more likely to misperceive black children as angry than white children. Racialized people have historically been seen as more emotional and unstable. “Sullen people / Half devil, half child,” wrote Rudyard Kipling in his 1899 poem The White Man’s Burden.

There is also a gender rage gap. I’m not sure there’s a woman on earth who hasn’t been instructed to “smile!” » by a random man, who thinks that women should always be affable. Even Hillary Clinton was publicly told to smile by news anchor Joe Scarborough in 2016, after winning the Democratic primary. And the pressure to be nice, to smile all the time, is heightened when you’re a woman of color. Serena Williams has repeatedly fought the “angry black woman” trope.

Constantly suppressing anger isn’t healthy, but it’s also true that joy can be an act of resistance. What interests me about Mamdani is how subversive her smile is. Many of his detractors, I suspect, would love nothing more than to see him get angry. To see him lose control, get angry, so they can point at him and say, “Look at that angry brown man. Look how scary he is.” Sure, they keep saying all that, but that doesn’t really mean he looks like a puppy.

Back to my science experiment. My month of constantly smiling hasn’t been easy because I look a bit sullen when my mood is neutral and can’t control my facial expressions in other circumstances. I’ve tried to keep my expression deliberately impassive in the past, but it looks like I’m constipated. Once I mastered the permanent smile, I found it to be a very useful way to stay calm in difficult circumstances. Obviously, I don’t get yelled at like Mamdani all the time, but I recently participated in a few panels on Gaza, where I was asked some outrageous questions from people who were strongly anti-Palestinian. “Mamdani channel, Mamdani channel”, I told myself on these occasions and did my best to smile kindly.

My scientific conclusion? Smiling helped lower my heart rate; it’s a good way to reset emotionally. But it also hurt my cheeks and resulted in some horrible photos of me. So even though I have Mamdani’s smile in my back pocket for tough occasions, I revert to my usual expression for the time being.