WHEN DENIS QUAID’S monstrous incarnation leers at a visibly upset Margaret Qualley in the hit 2024 movie The Substance, he tells her, “Pretty girls should always smile.”

A rictus grin slowly forms on Qualley’s face, as she joins generations of women who face a choice in this particular instance: do I comply and remain safe, or do I challenge the dangerous absurdity of the male gaze?

That scene came into my mind recently when Donald Trump took umbrage against Kaitlin Collins, CNN’s White House Correspondent, who dared to ask about Jeffrey Epstein’s victims during a press conference in the Oval Office.

Desperate to turn the page on an uncomfortable topic, the president lashed out, lambasting the award winning journalist for not smiling enough.

While being asked about the Epstein scandal and survivors of abuse by CNN's Kaitlin Collins, Trump instead said she was the worst and that he'd never seen her smile. CNN CNN

“You know, you are the worst reporter… I’ve known you for 10 years.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen a smile on your face,” he complained, with a giant frown on his own.

Composure and steadiness

I’ve been researching the strange phenomenon of men demanding that women smile, and from the anecdotal evidence I’ve gathered, I have little doubt that many female viewers felt acute empathy for Collins at that moment.

“I was actually really impressed that she didn’t waver in her seriousness while he was saying that,” Gina London, former CNN anchor and communications expert, tells me.

“Almost reflectively, I think some women would smile just because it was such an unusual and frankly stupid thing for him to say. I thought it was a master class in composure and steadiness.”

Collins is not the first woman to be publicly criticised for ‘failing to smile’. Pop star and designer, Victoria Beckham, has received much press attention for years about her lack of a smile, with references to her ‘miserable faces’ at events. 

Victoria Beckham (centre, in white) has been widely lambasted for........

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