【英语社会】与笑容开什么玩笑！

In Japan, workers are being subjected to a new sort of control – computer scanning to see if their smiles are wide enough. Every day, staff at 15 railway stations in Tokyo are having to bare their teeth at a computer that rates the curvaceousness of their smile on a scale of one to 100. For those who can't muster a broad enough grin, the computer issues directions on how to improve performance. Lift up the corners of your mouth more, it orders. Staff are then given a print-out of their best smile to refer to as needed.

Oddly, the very same day that I read about the smile police in the east I received an e-mail from the west about a less coercive but no less enthusiastic attempt to get us to beam at each other. Smile and Move is a movement based in Richmond, Virginia, that is peddling its message on Facebook, Twitter, mugs, books, posters and videos. On YouTube, there is a three-minute video trying to brainwash us into smiling. “Love it! Keep it up!” say the comments posted on the site. Later on that same day, I cycled to the dentist and in the waiting room picked up a copy of The Times. The main feature showed a life coach photographed with a pencil clamped between his jaws demonstrating how to improve our smiles.

What is going on? I wondered. Should we all be smiling more?

Certainly not, is the view of the British public. Last week, the BBC website asked people whether they would like more customer service to come with a smile. They mainly replied that no, they would not. They weren't anti-smiling per se, they were anti-smiling-to-order. One man said that if someone was smiling at him for no reason he'd want to knock his block off. Almost everyone agreed that smiling inanely was creepy and made people look like the Stepford Wives – a fake smile was worse than none at all.

While I'm profoundly British in temperament, I'm with the Japanese and Americans on smiling. People serving others should smile more. In fact, anyone who wants to make themselves amiable and get what they want should smile more. I disagree that faking is bad – it is part of what it is to be a good employee.

A smile isn't a gesture of spontaneous joy, it's a social thing. A fascinating experiment was done in a bowling alley that showed that when people get a strike they do not smile as they watch the pins come clattering down. It is only when they turn to face others that their faces crack.

We smile to communicate a message. If you put two macaque monkeys in a cage, they start off pretty tense, as even the slightest movement will have them tearing each other to pieces. After staring at the floor, one of them will bare its teeth at the other to indicate non-aggression. If the other bares its teeth back, the next minute they are stroking each other's fur.

With humans, smiles work in the same way. A smile from someone in a shop, say, is a reassuring gesture and a prelude if not to grooming, then at least to conducting business.

As I sat in the cage of the dentist's waiting room, I watched two other patients arrive. One looked at me and smiled and the other marched straight in and sat down, avoiding eye contact. If I had to start a fight with one of them, I know which it would be.

Smiling comes more naturally to some people than to others and the problem is how best to get unsmiley people to smile more. The Japanese way is flawed not because it's like Big Brother but because it wrongly assumes that a bigger smile is a better one. Last week, I had lunch in a fashionable new Italian canteen in Soho, and the Marlon Brando lookalike who made my tea was unsmiling until, at the last minute, he curled the corners of his lips a fraction. It was more rewarding than if he had given me the full monty.

Holding a pencil in your mouth is still worse as a smile enhancer. My husband constantly wanders around the house pen clamped between his teeth, not to help the curvature of his smile but because it's where he stows the pen when not in use. I find the sight of him like this so annoying, that I quite often try to wrest it out from his tightly locked jaws – a tussle that ends with no one smiling.

The answer on smiling came to me as I finished my spell in the dentist's chair. It is to have better looking teeth. I have recently spent a not inconsiderable sum on having my teeth bleached, and even though it hasn't worked as well as I'd like, I'm smiling a lot more to try to get value from my investment.

There is a significant statistical correlation between what the scientists call “smile-related quality of life” and the state of one's teeth. I have found a study that shows those with mobile teeth, missing teeth or deep gum pockets barely smile at all.

One of the saddest messages on the BBC website was from a former maths teacher who could not afford to have the two crowns at the front of his mouth replaced. “My smile, my teeth are all part of what makes me a good teacher. So now I am a virtual recluse – on the scrap heap of life.”

Unlike the maths teacher, Gordon Brown could afford to get his teeth fixed and smiles all the time. So much so that he is now ready for the smiling advanced class: learning how to identify the occasions on which smiling is not appropriate.

在日本，员工正接受一项新式管理——接受电脑扫描，看他们笑得是否足够灿烂。每天，东京15个火车站的员工都必须在电脑前露齿而笑，由电脑对他们笑容的甜美程度打分，分值从1到100不等。对于那些笑得不够充分的人，电脑会发出有关如何改善的指令。它会命令道：“嘴角再翘一点儿”。之后，员工会获得一份打印出来的最佳笑容图，以便需要时参考。

奇怪地是，就在我读到东方实施笑容管制消息的当天，收到了一封来自西方的电子邮件，内容是关于一项没那么强制性、但同样热情的尝试：让我们互相微笑。“Smile and Move”是一项源自弗吉尼亚州里士满的运动，正通过Facebook、Twitter、杯子、书、海报以及视频等传递着讯息。YouTube上有一个3分钟的视频，试图说服我们微笑。“爱上微笑！保持微笑！”该网站上的贴子上如是说。当天晚些时候，我骑车去看牙，在等候的地方，随手拿起了一份《泰晤士报》(The Times)。上面一篇重头特稿展示了一位生活教练用上下颚夹紧铅笔，演示如何改进笑容的照片。

这是怎么了？我感到十分困惑。我们每个人都应该多笑一笑吗？

在英国民众的心目中，当然不是这样。上周，英国广播公司(BBC)网站询问他们：是否希望更多的客户服务伴随着笑容而来？他们大部分都回答说不，他们不希望这样。他们不是反对微笑本身，而是反对标准化的笑容。一位男士表示，如果有人无缘无故地对他笑，他会想去扁他。几乎所有人都认为，空洞的笑令人毛骨耸然，并且会让人看上去像电影《复制娇妻》(Stepford wives)——假笑还不如不笑。

尽管从骨子里讲我属于英国人的性格，但在微笑这个问题上，我赞同日本人和美国人的观点。为别人提供服务的人应该多一点笑容。事实上，任何想让自己变得更亲切、得到自己想要的东西的人，都应该多笑。我不认为假笑不好——这是成为一名好雇员的条件之一。

微笑不是内心喜悦的表现，而是一种社交行为。有人在保龄球道做了一个有趣的实验，实验表明，当人们打出好球，看着木瓶哗啦啦倒下的时候并不会笑。只有当他们把脸转向别人的时候，他们才露出笑容。

我们笑是为了传达讯息。如果你把两只猕猴关在一个笼子里，刚开始它们会非常紧张，因为即使是一个最微小的动作，也会让它们把对方撕成碎块。在注视了一段时间地板之后，其中一只猕猴会向另一只露出自己的牙齿，表明没有侵犯的意思。如果另一只也以露齿作为回应，那么，接下来它们很快将会开始互相抚摸。

对人类而言，笑容也有着同样的功效。比如说，商店里的人的微笑是一种令人放心的表示，如果说不是为了表示亲近，至少是开始做生意的前奏。

当我坐在牙医诊所等候室这个笼子里，我看到另外两位患者来到这里。其中一个看着我，对我微笑；另一个则径直走进来，然后坐下来，回避目光与人接触。如果我必须与其中一位开战的话，我知道自己的对手会是谁。

对于有些人而言，微笑比其他人来得更自然，问题在于，如何才是让不苟言笑的人多笑的最佳方式。日本的方法存在缺陷，并非因为它像《老大哥》（Big Brother，有严格监控别人活动之意——译者注），而是因为它错误地假定笑得越充分越好。上周，我在伦敦Soho区一家时尚的新意大利餐厅用午餐，那个为我上茶的小伙子长得像马龙•白兰度(Marlon Brando)，面无笑容，直到最后一分钟，他的嘴角才开始微微翘起。这比他露齿大笑的效果更好。

在嘴里夹一根铅笔、以此强化笑容的方法更糟。我丈夫经常用牙齿噙着钢笔，在房里走来走去。这不是为了让自己笑得更甜美，而是因为他不用钢笔时，就会把钢笔放在那里。我很讨厌看到他这副样子，以至于我常常会试图从他紧闭的双鄂中把笔夺下来——这种争斗通常不会以笑容收场。

当我看完牙之后，我找到了有关微笑的答案。它是为了让牙齿更好看。最近，我花了不小的一笔数目洗牙，尽管还没有达到我想要的效果，但我比以前笑得更多了，因为我想让自己的投资得到回报。

被科学家称之为“和微笑有关的生活质量”与一个人的牙齿状况之间，存在明显的统计相关性。我已经发现有一项研究显示，那些牙齿松动、缺失或牙囊很深的人几乎很少露出笑容。

BBC网站上一条最令人悲哀的讯息，来自于一位前数学教师，他支付不起更换门牙牙冠的费用。“我的笑容、牙齿都是我作为一位优秀教师的组成部分。因此，现在我实际上已经是一个隐者——被扔进了生活的垃圾堆。”

与这位数学老师不同，戈登•布朗(Gordon Brown)支付得起固定牙齿的费用，因而能够一直保持微笑。他笑得太多了，以至于现在已准备进修高级微笑课程：学会如何识别哪些场合不适合微笑。

译者/董琴