The American smile offers a containment: agreeable, ebullient, it imprisons tears; denies they exist.
Years ago, walking in Spain with a friend, who’d grown up under Franco, he said: “there’s nothing to smile about. Laughing from joy is different, it’s experiential. You’ve had a child, you’ve shared a lively song. Smiling is for crooks.”
“In Spain,” he’d said, “we know smiling is just the skeleton peeking through.”
Of course in America smiles are profitable. Very. If this was a defensible essay I’d tell you how much orthodontists make per year.
When my maternal grandmother died I saw my first undertaker’s smile. It was churlish, perfectly smiley–smile-wide, flash of exceptional teeth, then his lips remembered to cover the gravestones, but not before that invidious flex said “you can’t afford the Conquistador, the casket that conquers death.”
Planet of the Blind 