"As a big fan of citizen science, I have spent the past month conducting a very important experiment. While I am not quite as hardcore as the American virologist Jonas Salk, who injected the polio vaccine into himself and his family before large-scale trials, this scientific inquiry has involved some personal pain. You see, I have spent the last month trying to smile like Zohran Mamdani."
"This is not, as I have discovered, an easy feat. Ever since the incoming mayor of New York became a household name, I've been intrigued by his perma-smile. His detractors call him a jihadist, and he smiles. He meets Donald Trump, and he smiles. Some Republican lawmakers launch a campaign to investigate his path to citizenship and deport him? He keeps on smiling."
A month-long experiment attempted to mimic Zohran Mamdani's constant smile. Mamdani smiles in response to insults, meetings with Donald Trump, and attempts to investigate his citizenship or deport him. The smile appears persistent and prompts questions about whether habitual smiling alters internal emotion or is a defensive performance. Research on smiling and mood is mixed: some studies find slight mood improvement from smiling, but effects are limited and smiling cannot cure clinical depression. Brown and Black people often experience policing of emotions, learning early that displays of anger are treated as wrong while white men's anger can be seen as righteous.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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