Today, I met a little girl with Bitchy Resting Face.
She wasn’t angry. She wasn’t upset. She was actually pretty neutral. She just had bitch-face.
I’d thought this phenomenon was strictly limited to adults, but I guess it has to start at some point, right?
She was a toddler, but a young toddler, maybe 17 months old, and I know very well from Honest Toddler and from personal experience that a toddler can be the devil if she doesn’t get her way. (Not a devil. THE. ACTUAL. DEVIL.) But that’s not what was happening here. She seemed relatively content, all things considered. No, it was the furrow of her brow, the way her nose crinkled in distaste when she was idly looking at something, the pursing of her perfect Kewpie-doll lips. All together, it added up to pure and utter disdain.
In an adult, Bitchy Resting Face is confusing and potentially insulting. In a child, it is downright terrifying.
Let me back up for a second here: We were in a music class, the last music class of the semester and a makeup one, at that, so I had never seen her before. And when we first walked in, she had a smile on her face—and looked downright angelic with her big blue eyes and wisps of blond curls. And as I said, we were in a music class! Happy, happy, joy, joy! Yet every time I caught her looking at me, with my big, dopey smile and my exaggerated clapping to the beat, she had that look on her face and seemed to be sitting in silent judgment of me.
But then she’d suddenly smile when I’d turn my attention on her, and I’d think I’d imagined it. Again and again and again.
I’d forgotten all about this little episode until 12 hours later, when I was scrolling through some iPhone photos. My son was happily attempting to play a toy saxophone. And there, right behind my goofy, smiling boy was that little girl with the angry face and demon eyes. I literally jumped about two feet off my couch.
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