Why models don't smile

You can't please all the people all of the time. Just ask Dove. For years women flocked to buy Dove because it was a brand that embraced their curves and their inner beauty with a message of hope.

Finally, a major beauty brand was breaking the hold the "media" had ostensibly created on people's perceptions of beauty.

Now, however, it is suffering a backlash of sorts. Limited-edition bottles of Dove product designed to reflect all these wonderfully diverse body shapes appear to have taken the "body positive" message a step too far for comfort. Women do not want to be told their shape might resemble a bottle! They have been telling Dove all about it on social media.

I have been thinking about this because, like Dove, we too received a letter of complaint. Why are the models on our fashion pages perennially glum, the reader wanted to know? Why no smiles? Our reader helpfully created a collage of all these unhappy women to make her point. She had a point - the models weren't exactly bubbling over with joie de vivre.

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What could the reason for this uniform grumpiness be? Well, apart from being told not to smile by the fashion editors, stylists and photographers, it could be any number of reasons. Perhaps the models are upset because they have unwittingly become the poster girls for anorexia. And, apparently the "media" is starving them anyway, so it is hard to smile when you are thinking about your next meal receding into the gaping maw of the fashion industry.

They could be sad about the fact that they are objectified all day just to sell clothes. They could also be suffering at the hands of evil casting agents in Paris, who apparently made 150 models wait for hours in a dark stairwell when the electricity went off in the building, and then shouted at them for ordering pizza.

These are all valid concerns. And everyone will be pleased to note that the French fashion industry is now measuring the BMI of models to make sure they are eating and not succumbing to the pressure to be even thinner. About the objectification stuff there is less to be done - just look at Instagram and Snapchat. It's an epidemic of global proportions. Everyone is doing it to themselves.

On a more existential level the models could be angry at the systemic abuse of the female gender and so can't bring themselves to crack a smile. I mean what is there to smile at? Between the Donald and Jacob the world is pretty much in a grim state - never mind the guy with the strange helmet haircut and his finger on the nuclear and cyberattack buttons in North Korea. Plus the icecaps are melting. Now you want a smile?

But I digress. Asking why they don't smile is like asking why women don't like bottles representing their various body shapes. Perhaps women are just sick and tired of being told to smile so they can be nice, unthreatening girls who appeal to men. Or, and this is my final guess - they could just be too cool. They are models after all, paid because they are indeed really beautiful and look good in a picture - they don't need to smile!