Bring on our sunny beams

Thousands of people flock to St Kilda beach in Melbourne after lockdown resetrictions eased. Picture: Aaron Francis

Bring on the language of the Aussie smile, the medicine of our maskless joy. We’re famous the world over for our grins; for smiling when we talk and the crinkles around sun-battered eyelids; for the twinkle in our eyes when we’re delivering a healthy dose of Aussie dryness and our smiley friendliness wherever we lay our hat on this Earth.

Like voices of the dead, we recall most potently the smiles of those who’ve left us. Smiling is poetry, conveying so much in condensed form. We have waited so long for the naked grins of a post-pandemic life, with faces fully exposed to the world and the burden of Covid uncertainty lifted from us.

Memories of Australian celebrities are their smiles. Strop’s lopsided, closed grin that didn’t let the flies in. Mark Lee’s smile that broke our hearts in Gallipoli. The radiance of a laughing Deborah Mailman. Judy Davis’s mocking, knowing smile in My Brilliant Career. Toni Collette getting married in Muriel’s Wedding, the playful dazzle of a young David Gulpilil in Walkabout. Then the broadcasters: Leigh Sales’ sweet one, Karl Stefanovic’s boyish one, Dave Hughes’s gappy one. Dame Edna’s wriggly line of wryness. Warnie’s cheeky grin. Ash Barty’s dimpled delight. The dorky smile of Luna Park in Sydney and the enigmatic smile of its sister park in Melbourne. “But that’s how Melbourne people smile,” the Chap teases, and he’s allowed to say this because he’s from Melbourne.

We Aussies are so very good at our smiles. It’s one of our greatest assets, brought out in spades whenever we’re hosting international sporting competitions. Our smiles signal the qualities of national character we’ve traditionally been known for – openness, warmth, breeziness, mateship, all wrapped up in that “no worries” mentality. Smiles are magnets, drawing people in.

Then there are those who don’t smile, as suspicious to me as a person without curiosity or a house without books. Shakespeare’s Caesar remarks of Cassius, “He loves no plays, …he hears no music; / Seldom he smiles, and smiles in such a sort / As if he mocked himself and scorned his spirit / That could be moved to smile at anything.”

We’ve learnt over the past few years the power in smiling with our eyes as well as our mouths, because often it’s the only way to convey any warmth behind a mask. Genuine smiling infects the eyes too. Roald Dahl wrote in Danny, the Champion of the World, “I was glad my father was an eye-smiler. It meant he never gave me a fake smile because it’s impossible to make your eyes twinkle if you aren’t feeling twinkly yourself. A mouth-smile is different. You can fake a mouth-smile any time you want, simply by moving your lips.”

In primates, a showing of the teeth – especially when clamped together – is almost always a sign of submission, and it could be that the human smile evolved from this. Yes, smiling demonstrates enthusiasm; and yes it can be seen as a lowering of ourselves in openness. But why should this ever be considered as lesser? Smiling is healthy, a natural drug. It releases endorphins which can reduce blood pressure, relax mood, lower stress hormones and lessen physical pain. Smiling costs nothing. It’s a free gift to others.

It also, possibly, lengthens our lives. US scientists studied an old photo of a baseball team and found those who smiled more lived longer. The big grinners, with the so-called “Duchenne smile” – an authentic expression of joy named after a 19th century neurologist – lived an average of 79.9 years. Those who were only partially smiling, 75 years. And the misery guts who weren’t smiling at all? They lived to a more miserly 72.9 average. The difference between the smiley people and the stony-faced was an impressive seven years. So bring on our beams, I say, because the Aussie summer is almost here, with all its seasonal loveliness – and a maskless existence feels tantalisingly close.