You know that person. You pass them on the street, you sit next to them in class, you see them in FoCo. You are scared of them. You have never actually talked to them, and you might not even know their name, but you sense they are an angry creature, possibly without a soul, who hates everyone.
But you have made a grave mistake in judging these types of people. They laugh, they enjoy the smell of fresh baked cookies, they shower regularly, they cried during “The Shawshank Redemption” and they took the SATs. They are just like you, except, they have a resting bitch face, an RBF.
An RBF can manifest in a variety of ways. Some possessors of resting bitch faces look akin to disgruntled pitbull, others like they are continually being given a flu shot, some as though they are smelling a putrid odor and a few appear as if they might punch anyone in their eyesight.
“When I first met you I was scared of you.”
This phrase is commonplace for people with an RBF. They come to accept the natural state of their face as one that exudes feelings of anger, disgust or misery.
There are three sub-categories of the resting bitch face: the mean face, the mad face and the melancholy face. Each face is prone to misconceptions regarding the personality of the person with RBF. The mean RBF is one in which the person looks as though they abhor any type of affection and have never cracked a smile, except when they saw someone slip on an icy sidewalk. Essentially, his or her countenance exudes every characteristic akin to the Grinch. Individuals with mean RBFs are the least approachable type because they appear disinterested and cruel. Their facial expressions make it look like they spend their free time in Tolkien’s Mordor hanging with the Orcs.
As a self-identified mean RBF, Tara Roudi ’15 expressed how her facial expression interfered with her ability to make friends freshman year.
“My current friends told me they were all terrified of me when they first met me because they thought my personality corresponded with my resting bitch face,” she said.
Onlookers might assume that people with mean RBFs throw eggs out of their car at people for fun.
People identified as having mad RBFs have facial expression similar to Hilary Swank during her most intense fight scenes in “Million Dollar Baby.” They look like they might punched someone at any given moment, whether they are in line at Hinman, walking across the Green or arriving late to their 9L. Most of the time, they look pissed off and are assumed to have volatile personalities. It is not uncommon for individuals with mad RBFs to receive coupons for anger management from anonymous sources.
“I met this girl early freshman fall and thought there is no way I’m going to be friends with her, because she seems mad and looks at me like she wants to put a bullet through my head all the time,” Rebecca Jacobson ’15 said. “I ended up taking a class with her and when we were required to speak, she was friendly, and I slowly realized her face isn’t a portrayal of how she feels about me.”
Julian MacMillan / The Dartmouth Staff
The third category of the RBF is the melancholy face. If this type of RBF were a nail polish color, it would be the shade of dark purple that gets mistaken for black. People with a melancholy RBF always appear as though they might break into tears. Onlookers most likely assume their childhood pet just died, or that they just completed a CS 1 midterm.
Rose Dicovitsky ’14, a possessor of the sad RBF, recounts her experience from freshman year.
“One of my friends told me his friend referred to me as the ‘sad volleyball player,’ which is not how you want to be known on campus,” Dicovitsky said.
Anyone who sees someone with a melancholy RBF might assume they listen to a lot of Bon Iver.
There is no cure for the RBF. A natural resting face is not like hair color. One cannot simply change it. While some people were blessed with cheery resting faces, there are a multitude of people whose faces radiate negative energy when their muscles are in a relaxed state. But the appearance of someone’s resting face might translate to their personality.
“After hearing that I am unapproachable, sometimes, I consciously think about it when I am somewhere public and try too look less sad,” Dicovitsky said.
You can’t ascertain someone’s personality simply by how they look.
“Anyone new I meet, I have to make a conscious effort to look as interested as I actually am,” Roudi said.
The RBF has its advantages.
“Getting a smile from someone with a resting bitch face is like getting an A from a teacher who only gives B’s, it’s very fulfilling,” Catherine Donahoe ’15 said.
The individual with RBF is like a secret code waiting to be cracked.
It’s easy for observers of RBF to prescribe “treatments.” Just try and smile when you walk around FoCo, don’t frown when you walk to class, stop looking so intense. While these might be genuine efforts to help out friends, it is vital that people understand the involuntary nature of the RBF.
Some of my closest friends have resting bitch faces — they are kind and happy people. They just don’t look like it at first glance, or second glance or third glance.
