Botox, Bieber, McDonald’s, and Science
I’m thrilled to welcome back Super Author (no, really, she’s super *g*) Ellen Hartman to the lair!
I have a scientific discovery to share with you. I didn’t do the science, but I tested the conclusion and here it is: if you pretend to smile, you’ll actually feel happy.
I had a paper route when I was ten and started babysitting soon afterwards. What I really wanted was a steady paycheck, so the second I turned sixteen, I applied for my first real job at McDonald’s in downtown Scranton, Pennsylvania. That job brought my first unrequited crush. It was on my manager, the aptly named Mr. Mark Paradise—he was almost twenty years old, with Bo Duke’s golden curls, who could resist? During my time at McDonald’s, I learned many valuable lessons, including these gems memorized from my boss’s managing phrase book:
“If there’s time to lean, there’s time to clean.”
“If you fake a smile, you’ll actually be happy.”
The first one is obviously true. Although I’d offer that it’s equally true that if there’s time to lean, there’s time to read a book, to write bad poetry about cute managers, or to check in on the Romance Bandits blog.
That second managerial axiom, though, sounds ridiculous. How can pretending to smile actually make you happy? (Especially if you’re a sixteen-year-old girl suffering an unrequited crush on a guy who has no interest in her beyond the question of whether the cash in her register drawer balances at the end of the shift.)
Turns out Manager Mark Paradise was not only swoon-worthy, he was smart. There’s real science to back him up. You all know that Botox injections make it impossible to stop smiling, right? (Google “worst Botox faces” if you’re unfamiliar with this phenomenon.) People who have had Botox injections have these permanent, slightly frozen smiles. Scientists in Wales gave a quiz intended to uncover anxiety and depression to women who had received Botox and to women who hadn’t. What they found was that those women who’d been chemically treated to create permanent, fake smiles were actually happier than the un-Botoxed ones.
Fake smiles = real happiness.
It’s science*.
Last winter, when I was starting the first draft of my current Superromance, Out of Bounds, I was feeling blue about a number of things. If you’ve ever written a Superromance, you’ll know that “blue” is not the optimal mental starting point. Supers are driven by serious, realistic emotional conflict. I was staring down 75,000 words worth of intense emotional exploration. Happy was far away and funny was even farther, but this book needed funny scenes. I’d already sketched out a pet for the heroine, an adorably evil Schnoodle. This semi-feral, half-Poodle, mutt-with-a-heart-of-gold named Angel deserved an author who could write funny stuff. But how could I force myself to write funny scenes if I was stuck feeling blue?
I decided to tap into the fake-a-smile science.
Fortunately for my forehead, I live in the middle of nowhere and there aren’t any Botox providers listed in our yellow pages. Plus, I’m afraid of needles. So the injected smile route was out.
So how did I do it?
Okay, pause for a confession: at this point, I’m reconsidering writing this blog. When you find out where I found my fake happiness, it’s possible you’re going to lose all respect for me. (That is, if the Bo Duke reference above didn’t already do me in.)
Here goes nothing.
Justin Bieber made me happy.
No laughing! (I hear you Arcade Fire fans snickering. Stop it.)
Have you listened to Bieber sing? Here, try “One Less Lonely Girl.” Say what you will, but that is one happy song. Some might say fake-happy, but all of the science-minded people like me (along with all those women in Wales getting Botox) know by now that fake doesn’t matter when it comes to smiling. I downloaded a bunch of music by the Biebs and threw in a little Taylor Swift. Then I put on my headphones, shut down the real world, and wrote.
And you know what? The Romantic Times review for Out of Bounds called it a “fun read” which just goes to show you that everything Manager Mark Paradise ever said is brilliant and perfect, just like him.
No.
It goes to show that Justin Bieber really can fix everything that’s wrong with the world.
No.
It goes to show that sometimes, faking a smile will lead to the real thing. I’m going to keep this little bit of science in my back pocket. I have the feeling it will come in handy this winter.
What about you? Any bits of folk wisdom you’ve found to be surprisingly true? Any secrets to feeling happy? Want to share your embarrassing unrequited love stories? Or maybe just post a few of your favorite Bieber lyrics. (Hee.) Feel free to share in the comments.
Ellen is giving away two sets of books today – that’s two chances to win THE LONG SHOT and OUT OF BOUNDS!
*Note: I may have been kind of broadly interpreting the results of the Botox study because I wanted to blog about Justin Bieber, Mark Paradise, my writing process, but it’s a real study. You can read about it here in Scientific American.
