Thinking About the "Bitchy Resting Face" With Help From Laura Benanti

LAURA BENANTI WITH POSSIBLE "BITCHY RESTING FACE"

A couple of days ago I was listening to the radio and heard an interview with Laura Benanti.  I don’t know how familiar her name is to people, but she’s a successful TV actor who currently has a role in “Nashville, and she’s a Tony-winning Broadway musical star.  She’s pretty amazing.  She’s also hilarious when interviewed.  She was talking about the now famous concept of the “bitchy resting face.”  This concept, brought to fame by a video, suggests that a lot of us suffer from this syndrome.  When our faces are inactive, they settle into an unpleasant frown, which is unintended.  Ms. Benanti was talking about the severity of her personal “BRF.”  She said that one afternoon she was walking into a department store and saw a woman approaching.  Her  immediate reaction was “what a bitch this woman must be!”   Seconds later, she realized she was approaching a mirror.

This morning Panera was pretty crowded.  Lots of unusual faces mixed in with the usual suspects.  Kids were there, a couple business people working hard and rather loudly on their laptops, several groups of mostly ladies.  Quite a few individuals were there, too.  As I looked about the room and thought about Laura Benanti’s story, I started to judge the number of “bitchy resting faces” and came to this conclusion.  Almost all of us when not engaged in conversation suffer from this syndrome.  If you are sitting alone, drinking your coffee, reading from your iPad, happy as a little clam, your face doesn’t necessarily reflect this.  So I thought some more about it.  What if we didn’t have BRF’s!  What if we all sat around reading our papers, drinking our coffee, doing our crosswords, with great, big, inane grins on our faces.  Wouldn’t Panera, or anywhere else for that matter, resemble a meeting place for pharmaceutically-controlled folks who find reason to smile when there is no reason apparent.  I don’t know, but it made me think once more, that nature usually has a reason for things the way they are, including BRF’s.--Greg Ellstrom

(For samples of Laura Benanti sense of humor go to You Tube and check the “Laura Benanti Explains Shakespeare” videos.)