Forget everything I ever said against the internet. It is truly the greatest invention by, and gift to the rest of, humanity. For with a single viral video it has given a problem with no name not just a moniker, but a perfect definition and delineation of its awful ramifications. And all in less than three minutes. And in so doing it has freed thousands, maybe millions of us around the globe, who suffer from the curse of Bitchy Resting Face.
The parody public service announcement film was made by comedian Taylor Orci, herself a sufferer of the condition, and describes the torment of those of us whose faces in repose suggest that we spend our days skewering other people on verbal spikes and newborn kittens on the real thing. Our essentially kindly natures – or, at least, our non-kitten-killing ones – remain hidden beneath our inescapably murderous miens.
A naturally miserable physiognomy means you are constantly having to create your facial expressions quite consciously, adjusting and readjusting until you feel your face fall into something that feels proximate to those pleasant ones sported by others.
It never works. For example, whenever I am hauled in to Guardian HQ for a byline photograph, or for one to accompany a feature, I try to beam. I do. I force my face into the most extreme positions it can bear. Each time, I feel I am surely outsmiling Julia Roberts when she gets the ruby necklace in Pretty Woman.
Look at the photograph in the middle of this column. I look like I can't wait to get back to that pile of squirming newborn kittens and barbecue equipment.
Orci makes the point in her video that it is women who attract the most attention if they are not naturally smiley, friendly or approachable-looking. It's a point unwittingly underlined by the fact that the male version referred to in the sketch (Asshole Resting Face) gained virtually no public traction at all; and by other responses, which included one plastic surgeon going on US television's Today show to describe Bitchy Resting Face as "a real phenomenon" and outlining the procedures (brow and "grin lift") needed to "turn a permanent frown upside down".
You would think that with the Queen, as an obvious and lifelong sufferer of this condition, we would not, for once, have had to wait for the US to come along and do the consciousness-raising for us. But then, the problem is doubtless more acute in younger, friendlier countries, founded on optimism and the belief in the pursuit of pleasure as an inalienable right, rather than an immoral practice, and as a result the spur to recognition is greater.
But since last Sunday we have had a chance to regain the initiative. For we have Andy Murray, who, when he fulfilled his greatest ambition by winning Wimbledon, roared, punched the air, hugged his parents, stripped back his lips from his teeth and grimaced… but didn't smile.
I therefore claim Murray as the frowning figurehead for the UK B/ARF Association. Members will be delighted. Not, of course, that you'll be able to tell.
