The Smiles of Champions
Smiling is my favourite sport. And when it comes to the “longest smile” award, Leonardo di Vinci’s La Gioconda(Mona Lisa) most definitely takes the gold.
What’s with Mona Lisa’s smile anyway? For nearly five centuries, people have been mesmerized with the many nuances of this lady’s lips. She could be having the worst hair day in history and no one would even notice. The focus is on her smile – the most recognizable and talked aboutsmile on the planet.
Smiles guide our fantasies. They connect us. They are the Olympian gateways to our desires. The champions of love.
The “open smile” is probably the most winning human courting stratagem. With lips drawn upward (engaging the zygomatic muscles which run from the cheekbone to the corners of the mouth and the obicularus oculi – which create the delighted crinkle in the outer corner of the eyes), the upper and lower teeth are fully exposed. It is also the least complicated facial expression to execute. Compared to the 96 nuances of anger, which depend on several hundred different muscle combinations, smiling is a breeze.
Like eyes, lips reveal telling cues about our innermost feelings. And because our lips are connected to the visceral nervous system and to the companion muscles that surround our mouth, our lips are the most emotionally expressive part of our body. We actually have difficulty keeping them still. At least, I know, I do.
So, can smiles mislead us? You betcha’. By observing opposite gender couples in casual conversations at bars, social anthropologists have been able to synopsize sexual response to smiling. It turns out that many women will try to radiate warm smiles to encourage men to talk to them – the smile suggests an approachability and openness. Men, on the other hand, may misinterpret the amicable signal and read it as an invitation to racier liaisons. Small wonder.
As to why this particular smile should excite us, well, that gets a little more complex. Apparently the opened-mouth grimace is a natural response when experiencing heightened sexuality. Chimpanzee when they play, expose only their bottom teeth, so as not to threaten one another with their sabre-like upper canine teeth. Humans bare their teeth when feeling cornered or when caught in a competitive situation. This “nervous smile” is an ancient mammalian practice. Predictably, the uptight grin is not likely to lead to a relay of kisses.
And while we may think that smiles are the best way to get our love messages across the finish line, the subliminal vocabulary of our lips can speak volumes. The lip lick is the most common non-verbal pickup cue. Some people indulge only a single, moistening lick, wetting the lower or upper lip, while others slowly glide the tongue over the mouth’s entire surface.
As far as neurological feats go, the fact that we can blow and whistle a tune testifies to our lips’ fluent adaptability. “You know how to whistle…” coyly purred Lauren Bacall through a well-chiselled set of lips in the 1944 film To Have and Have Not.
Lips also play an important role in sub-verbal language: one “bites” one’s lip in vexation; “curls” one’s lip in scorn; “hangs” one’s lip in humiliation; is “lip deep” when being superficial; has a “stiff upper lip” when being firm; gives “lip” or acts “lippy” with brazen talk; and pays “lip service” when proffering but not performing like a champion.
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