"Smiling White" Is the Pressure People of Color Experience to Be Palatable

"Apparently, there's this new procedure where people pump glutathione — an antioxidant in plants, animals, and shit — into their veins in the hopes of lightening their skin," my friend Sandy said to me.

I took a sip of my Victoria cerveza and wondered, "Is that what happened to Sammy Sosa?" Then I said, "Wow, the inability to live comfortably in our own skin has come to this."

I confessed to her: "You know, my Dominican grandmother used to come over and check the width of my nose? Yeah, she would ask my parents if I was really squeezing and pulling it forward. Then she would insist that I sleep with a clothespin pinched to my nose to help keep it thin, like they do it back in el campo. The worst part about it is that I actually did it."

"Yeah, I did that too," she says. "It sucks," she said with confidence.

I agreed. "It does suck." Then I asked, "Who told you to do that?"

"I don't know," she said. "There was not a particular person, maybe I just made it up."

"Made it up?"

Can we make up this feeling of not-enoughness directed toward our own bodies? Or is it something we inherit? Does someone have to teach it to us? Do we make up our self-hate? How does a little child come to feel intuitively that this world isn't made for them — their body, lips, eyes, and beautiful face?

She went on to tell me about how she would spend hours in front of the mirror tucking in her lips to practice "smiling white."

I'd never heard of this term before, but I immediately understood what she meant. I felt it in my bones. I thought of the many times I'd wanted to cater to someone's comfort, and so I did the math to smile white. I knew when she said that smiling white was not just some physical skill one tries to attain but a social one as well. One where white is really just a synonym for power. As a little girl, Sandy was inherently asking what bodies of culture have often asked: how does one smile when they have power? How do I walk into the room and take up space with the confidence of a mediocre white man?

Many of us have said this or had it said to us in one way or another: "What, are you trying to be white now?" Which is really just like saying, "What, are you trying to have power now?"

Yes, yes, I am.

In this sense, "smiling white" isn't just about appearance but also about navigating and negotiating power structures. It's about the subtle ways bodies of culture try to align themselves with the dominant culture to gain power or avoid the negative consequences of being perceived as different or less than. It happens in professional spaces, boardrooms, Hollywood, and even comic book-turned-cartoon characters — just look at "Arthur," the animated 25-season TV series about an anthropomorphic aardvark. Even an aardvark had to learn to smile white!

This idea of smiling white comes into play for every creator and artist trying to make something, especially if that something is funded by the few people up top who excel at smiling white. Those C-suite execs will often ask, "Who is this for? Who is the audience?" This is when we, the content creators, become part of the problem because we start to put our art and creations into boxes. We call it Latine Art, Brown Art, Trans Art, Queer Art, Black Art — forgetting that art is art. Content is content. My homegirl, a Latine Hollywood executive who has worked at Sony, among many other studios, talks about "how fucked we are" that content has become Latine content or Black content. "Content is content," she says. "It doesn't have an ethnicity."

But we add ethnicity to it. We say, "Give me 'Crazy Rich Asians' but make it Latine." Does Van Gogh make Dutch art or just art?

If we want to stop smiling white, we first need to remember that art is art and that we are the ones who make it white, Black, or Brown. We are the ones who play the game. But we also get to stop playing it. We get to demand new rules.

In 1993, Time magazine's cover featured a digitally rendered face of a woman. A "mix of several races" created a lightly tinted brown-skinned woman. "The New Face of America," the headline read.

Almost 30 years later, Time's cover story seems to have gotten it right. Demographically, at least, we have become browner as a society and a world. I mean, the United States might have its first female Brown president, someone of Black and South Asian descent. But this has not led to a multiracial utopia free of racial strife — far from it.

I wonder if Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris still smiles white and chooses what smile to whip out and when. I almost bet she does. Just imagine all the nuances and complexities of identity, power, and performance in politics. I think of the classic Key & Peele "Obama Meet-and-Greet" sketch, which literally just happened in real life. Harris is a woman of color with significant power and visibility. Whether she sometimes adopts behaviors that align with the expectations of white-dominated societal norms consciously or unconsciously, I can't tell you, but I imagine it's there. After all, she's still trying to win Vermont and New Hampshire.

So, where does this leave us?

I believe this leaves us with beautiful forward motion. I think we see that the old, lasting effects of white supremacy are a kind of evil alchemy that can turn someone into no one. The kind that makes you look outside of yourself for validation from someone else. It can take a body of culture with so much to give and tell it that it has nothing to offer, that it is not worthy of love unless it's something else unless it smiles white. However, we are also rejecting this old model (as best we can) as individuals and as a community. When whiteness says, "Smile like me, turn your gold into metal," we say, "No, our gold should stay exactly as is."

Recently, I delivered my book, "Brown Enough," to hundreds of high schoolers in Los Angeles. Among the beautiful messages I received was this: "I was one of the students today at the school you went to, and I just wanted to say listening to you talk today, watching you be yourself today motivated me in some way to be more me. I'm grateful you were there."

I don't smile white anymore because that's not what's needed. I speak my truth, speaking out in moments of injustice or ignorance in traditionally white spaces. I care less about keeping quiet and more about bringing truth to light, voicing my truth. In Hollywood, I look inward, not outward. I care less about impressing others than about honoring myself—physically or otherwise.

I don't smile white anymore because that's not what's needed. What's needed is for all of us to be "more me," as it was so beautifully articulated.

Christopher Rivas is the author of "Brown Enough," an exploration of what it means to be Brown in a Black/white world. He also hosts two podcasts: "Brown Enough" and "Rubirosa." On screen, Rivas is known for his work on the Fox series "Call Me Kat," opposite Mayim Bialik. His latest book, "You're a Good Swimmer," is about the enchanting journey of conception without gendered terms and inclusive of all family dynamics.