I came across these two classifications of smile in a recent episode of a TV show my wife and watch regularly. The handful of shows, mostly murder mysteries and police crimes that we have been watching have one intellectually stimulating trait. They seem to introduce a new term from neurology, psychology or science that is either basis for the plot or a possible clue to solving the crime. These shows require my cellphone to be next to me to either make a note or look up what the terminology means, withing the context of the show’s plot. Terms like pertinent negative, presbyopia, limerence, proprioception and opposition surge are few examples. Who would have thought my idiot box has these kinds of shows. But I digress.
Getting back to the theme of this article, I would like to take a moment to define what these two kinds of smiles are and how they relate to what I would like share. A wonderful act of kindness and empathy from a beautiful group of people.
DuChenne smile: Source – Wikipedia ( Smile – Wikipedia ) While conducting research on the physiology of facial expressions in the mid-19th century, French neurologist Guillaume Duchenne de Boulogne in 1862 identified two distinct types of smiles. A Duchenne smile involves contraction of both the zygomatic major muscle (which raises the corners of the mouth) and the orbicularis oculi muscle (which raises the cheeks and forms crow’s feet around the eyes). The Duchenne smile has been described as “smizing”, as in “smiling with the eyes”.[23] An exaggerated Duchenne smile is sometimes associated with lying.
Pan Am Smile: Aka non Duchenne smile. A non-Duchenne smile involves only the zygomatic major muscle. “Research with adults initially indicated that joy was indexed by generic smiling, any smiling involving the raising of the lip corners by the zygomatic major …. More recent research suggests that smiling in which the muscle around the eye contracts, raising the cheeks high (Duchenne smiling), is uniquely associated with positive emotion.”
The “Pan Am smile”, also known as the “Botox smile”, is the name given to a fake smile, in which only the zygomatic major muscle is voluntarily contracted to show politeness. It is named after the now-defunct airline Pan American World Airways, whose flight attendants would always flash every passenger the same perfunctory smile. Botox was introduced for cosmetic use in 2002. Chronic use of Botox injections to deal with eye wrinkles can result in paralysis of the small muscles around the eyes, preventing the appearance of a Duchenne smile.
This theme of this article is an adumbration of an idea and evolved with a single, thoughtful and kind gesture of a group of people, some I had the privilege of meeting in person and others I have not yet met. I have included their names with their permission here. Jed, Jake, Sage, Rick, Jess, Andy, Shelly, Jeremy, Bryant, Brendan, Kate, Damon, Brigham, Sam, Jackson, and Marianne, members of Millburn & Company team.
I recently met some of them at a dinner reception hosted by Millburn and Company in San Jose. This is an annual dinner they host for their clients at various locations in US. As the evening progressed, the conversation morphed from business amicability to amiability. I was talking to some other invited guests and the hosts, some of whom are listed above and I mentioned about my blog and some of the articles that dealt with my personal challenges. The ensuing was as typical as one would expect from social interactions at a networking event. The small talks, polite conversations etc., and for all practical purposes shall I say a Pan Am smile.
Then this shows up in my mail. Not bromides. Not platitudes. Not warranted. No ulterior motives. Just a simple and collective humane gesture. There was no need for extending such gesture since no transaction is in offing or even expected. It is a simple reaction straight from heart to what I was describing in some of the articles. My articles contained my struggles with diabetes and a congenital affliction called veinous hemangioma. This group of people have shown me that we all can rise above the banality of business quid pro quo and reach out as fellow humans. The brilliance of their meaningful gesture is the tale of two cards. One with (lyrical to me) words and the other worth 2.5 million words at the rate of a picture is worth thousand words.
I was initially going to expound on the two kinds of smiles described above at a self-aware personal level. I guess I will defer that to a future article. The chance encounter with DuChenne smile and the thoughtful gesture from the M&C team lead me to a metonymic comparison, albeit one could argue a tenuous one. I have taken the underlying definitions of DuChenne smile and Pan Am smile which are defined for individuals and applied to a business enterprise which is typically unemotional entity at the least and a Pan Am entity at best. For the most part of my career, most of my networking events have been replete with Pan Am smile equivalents. This one is so personal, touching, thoughtful, kind and more importantly not warranted, that M&C is a corporate personification of DuChenne smile and they have put a DuChenne smile on my face, for sure.
