Smile!

The other day I watched an embarrassing old episode of The Avengers called "The Decapod" (it went downhill after the title). The plot was some sort of nonsense about a Balkan dictator/playboy who's going to be assassinated by some guy in a wrestling costume, only it's really him all along and he just wants to steal the UN's money and go on cruises, or something. But was really struck me was this:


That's Julie Stevens as Venus Smith, who was briefly one of John Steed's sidekicks in the early years of the show. She was a lounge singer, and each of her episodes included a musical number or two, which, you know, kind of tiresome since the music is bland, but nice, I guess?

Anyway. I have a minor temporomandibular joint disorder, which basically means that my jaw has a tendency to get painfully tense and can lock sometimes and occasionally feels like it doesn't fit right, which is terribly uncomfortable. Smiling or laughing for prolonged periods can be particularly bad for it. It's nothing tragic, and considering that it's currently my only notable physical ailment aside from back pain due to shitty posture, I'm not going to complain all that much about it.

My point is, look at that picture. The muscles in poor Julie Stevens' jaw must be so goddamn tense. And she's making that face--completely unmoving, incidentally, I wish I had a video to share--while singing. And then she smiles through the rest of the hour-long episode, in which Steed discovers that the Balkan dictator has a thing for blondes and is coincidentally looking for a "private secretary," if you know what I mean, because the last one was sexily killed by a man in a wrestling mask, so then he tricks Venus into thinking that the dictator is actually some kind of entertainment impresario who wants to book her for a tour of the Balkans even though he's never heard her sing, and then she falls in love with him because he kidnaps her.

Smiling all the while.

Women of the world, if I may, I would like to sincerely apologize to your temporomandibular joints. If you don't want to smile all the time, that's totally fine with me. Next time someone stops you and asks "Why so glum?" or ingratiatingly tells you to "Smile, it's not so bad," sock him one for me. Maybe you can fuck up his jaw, too.