When You Don’t Smile

Something I put on Guardian responses when Grace Tame not smiling at the PM got her public castigation by the usual suspects. I’ve added photos and captions for context.

Left to right: The PM’s wife, the PM, Grace Tame and her fiance, at the recent Australian of the Year ceremony which she attended in the capacity of being the 2021 Australian of the Year (for her advocacy for survivors of sexual abuse), handing over to the 2022 recipient, Dylan Alcott (Paralympic Tennis Champion and disability advocate) – and which the PM as usual tried to make into a photo opportunity for his own propaganda

I just wanted to point out something regarding Grace Tame getting attacked by various people for not smiling at the PM, because I’ve not seen it pointed out anywhere in response yet (but I might have missed it) – that this is an extension of what happens in dysfunctional families, where abused kids are always pressured to “smile for the camera” in family photographs, so that the facade of “happy family” can be maintained.

If the family is healthy and supportive and genuinely happy, the kids will smile without being told. If it’s not and the family wants to create the impression that they are a healthy, happy, wonderful family – nothing to see here – that family will tell the unhappy kid to smile and fake happy body language and disparage the child if it doesn’t comply – “What’s wrong with you? You’re so rude/ungrateful. There are kids starving in Ethiopia. You don’t know how good you’ve got it.”

I know because I went through that, but like Grace Tame with the PM, who together with his party has harboured and promoted and stood by people accused of rape and abuse, and who want to charge people with libel just for pointing this out, and who have protected and enabled abusers, and are doing their damndest not to implement all the recommendations of the report by sex discrimination commissioner Kate Jenkins while paying it lip service and wanting to be seen to respect and implement it, etc etc etc (don’t get me started), I was the girl who refused to smile for family photo opportunities, and who refused to fake a reality that didn’t actually exist, and like Grace Tame, I was made to pay dearly for it by various people with vested interests in appearances, but I think the price I paid was worth the upholding of my authenticity, and of witnessing for reality instead of convenient fiction.

Because to refuse to participate in the pretence is to stay with reality and to witness the reality, even in the face of further abuse, gaslighting, being described as “difficult” and “damaged” (by the people who damaged you, oh the irony) and all the other many predictable things. And to stay with the reality means not to be robbed of your connection to it, and not to lose your own self to other people’s fictions, and to stay relatively sane and, as a teenager, not have difficulty individuating into your own person, instead of becoming the mirror or the puppet of the narcissist.

And the same thing we see in the microcosm of a dysfunctional family, we see in the macrocosm of our dysfunctional society.

Thank you Grace Tame, for refusing to lie with your face. There are so many reasons to dislike people with a narcissistic modus operandi, and to dislike a PM who does so much to further entrench systemic injustices, whether for women or non-whites or refugees or LGBTIQ or disabled people or people out of work or homeless (or really, anyone not in the little self-serving, self-reinforcing club that has a disproportionate grip on power and resources), all of whom, behind his own smiling mask, he and his cronies spit upon and make miserable and do damage to, all the while denying it.

In the middle of an Omicron emergency, the PM can’t stop handshaking. PR is everything. Grace Tame wasn’t getting co-opted into the propaganda and is showing the distaste many of us Australians feel about our incompetent, duplicitous, misogyny-enabling PM, who also stands in the way of improved social equality and dealing with the climate emergency, while pretending to address both. I do not feel represented by this PM I certainly did not elect, but like many, I feel very represented by Grace Tame. She stands for honesty and personal integrity, and she actually genuinely cares about things the PM only pretends to care about.

2 Replies to “When You Don’t Smile”

  1. Applauding! I loved this: “ to refuse to participate in the pretence is to stay with reality and to witness the reality, even in the face of further abuse, gaslighting, being described as “difficult” and “damaged” (by the people who damaged you, oh the irony) and all the other many predictable things. And to stay with the reality means not to be robbed of your connection to it, and not to lose your own self to other people’s fictions, and to stay relatively sane and, as a teenager, not have difficulty individuating into your own person, instead of becoming the mirror or the puppet of the narcissist.”
    And thanking Grace for not lying with her face- ugh. I felt that viscerally.
    Authenticity in our expression is the counter-action of too many years of self-betrayal.
    Very very well said, as always Sue.

  2. Thank you, Elizabeth – it’s lovely to hear this from a person who helped shape my own writing, which got considerably sharpened, to positive effect, by reading your own unafraid and unpretending prose (both on your blog and in your bio) and your brilliant manner of addressing social issues head-on. I’ve learnt a truckload from you, about writing and about society. I think the world would be a better place if bios like yours were on the school curriculum. Such an immunisation and eye-opener in one. ♥

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