Comment by Clubber
5 years ago
In the US smiling wasn't as prevalent, at least in photographs. Look at any Civil War era picture and nobody is smiling in their portraits. I'm not sure when that started. I read somewhere that back then people thought people who smiled all the time were "simple minded." Now I can't help thinking that every time I see some marketing copy with some model smiling while playing with soap or something.
The reason for the severe facial expressions and the lack of smiles in 19th-century photographs was the extremely long exposure times that the technology required back then. It was hard to hold a smile still enough that the film could capture it without blur. You can't assume from those portraits that people rarely smiled compared to now.
>The reason for the severe facial expressions and the lack of smiles in 19th-century photographs was the extremely long exposure times that the technology required back then.
That's one theory, another one I've seen is people had bad teeth, but everyone had bad teeth so I don't see how that would be an issue. I like the theory that they thought constant smiling was for simpletons.
https://history.nebraska.gov/blog/why-so-serious-3-reasons-w...
>You can't assume from those portraits that people rarely smiled compared to now.
Where did I say that?
Do you also think the world was black and white back then?
Everybody knows colours where only invented a few years before Calvin was born.
In America it's always about white and black, especially people seem to be obsessed with the amount of melanin pigmentation.