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Why didn't people smile in old-timey photographs? A smile meant something different back then.

Our perceptions of smiling have changed dramatically since the 1800s.

via Public Domain

Photos from the 1800s were so serious.

If you've ever perused photographs from the 19th and early 20th century, you've likely noticed how serious everyone looked. If there's a hint of a smile at all, it's oh-so-slight, but more often than not, our ancestors looked like they were sitting for a sepia-toned mug shot or being held for ransom or something. Why didn't people smile in photographs? Was life just so hard back then that nobody smiled? Were dour, sour expressions just the norm?

Most often, people's serious faces in old photographs are blamed on the long exposure time of early cameras, and that's true. Taking a photo was not an instant event like it is now; people had to sit still for many minutes in the 1800s to have their photo taken.

Ever try holding a smile for only one full minute? It's surprisingly difficult and very quickly becomes unnatural. A smile is a quick reaction, not a constant state of expression. Even people we think of as "smiley" aren't toting around full-toothed smiles for minutes on end. When you had to be still for several minutes to get your photo taken, there was just no way you were going to hold a smile for that long.

But there are other reasons besides long exposure times that people didn't smile in early photographs.

mona lisa, leonardo da vinci, classic paintings, famous smiles, art "Mona Lisa" by Leonardo da Vinci, painted in 1503Public domain

The non-smiling precedent had already been set by centuries of painted portraits

The long exposure times for early photos may have contributed to serious facial expressions, but so did the painted portraits that came before them. Look at all of the portraits of famous people throughout history prior to cameras. Sitting to be painted took hours, so smiling was out of the question. Other than the smallest of lip curls like the Mona Lisa, people didn't smile for painted portraits, so why would people suddenly think it normal to flash their pearly whites (which were not at all pearly white back then) for a photographed one? It simply wasn't how it was done.

A smirk? Sometimes. A full-on smile? Practically never.

old photos, black and white photos, algerian immigrant, turban, Algerian immigrant to the United States. Photographed on Ellis Island by Augustus F. Sherman.via William Williams/Wikimedia Commons

Smiling usually indicated that you were a fool or a drunkard

Our perceptions of smiling have changed dramatically since the 1800s. In explaining why smiling was considered taboo in portraits and early photos, art historian Nicholas Jeeves wrote in Public Domain Review:

"Smiling also has a large number of discrete cultural and historical significances, few of them in line with our modern perceptions of it being a physical signal of warmth, enjoyment, or indeed of happiness. By the 17th century in Europe it was a well-established fact that the only people who smiled broadly, in life and in art, were the poor, the lewd, the drunk, the innocent, and the entertainment […] Showing the teeth was for the upper classes a more-or-less formal breach of etiquette."

drunks, classic painting, owls, malle babbe, paintings "Malle Babbe" by Frans Hals, sometime between 1640 and 1646Public domain

In other words, to the Western sensibility, smiling was seen as undignified. If a painter did put a smile on the subject of a portrait, it was a notable departure from the norm, a deliberate stylistic choice that conveyed something about the artist or the subject.

Even the artists who attempted it had less-than-ideal results. It turns out that smiling is such a lively, fleeting expression that the artistically static nature of painted portraits didn't lend itself well to showcasing it. Paintings that did have subjects smiling made them look weird or disturbing or drunk. Simply put, painting a genuine, natural smile didn't work well in portraits of old.

As a result, the perception that smiling was an indication of lewdness or impropriety stuck for quite a while, even after Kodak created snapshot cameras that didn't have the long exposure time problem. Even happy occasions had people nary a hint of joy in the photographs that documented them.

Another reason why people didn't smile in old photos is that dental hygiene wasn't the same as it is today, and people may have been self-conscious about their teeth. “People had lousy teeth, if they had teeth at all, which militated against opening your mouth in social settings,” Angus Trumble, the director of the National Portrait Gallery in Canberra, Australia, and author of A Brief History of the Smile, said, according to Time.

wedding party photo, wedding, old weddings, black and white, serious photos, no smiles Even wedding party photos didn't appear to be joyful occasions.Wikimedia Commons

Then along came movies, which may have changed the whole picture

So how did we end up coming around to grinning ear to ear for photos? Interestingly enough, it may have been the advent of motion pictures that pushed us towards smiling being the norm.

Photos could have captured people's natural smiles earlier—we had the technology for taking instant photos—but culturally, smiling wasn't widely favored for photos until the 1920s. One theory about that timing is that the explosion of movies enabled us to see emotions of all kinds playing out on screen, documenting the fleeting expressions that portraits had failed to capture. Culturally, it became normalized to capture, display and see all kind of emotions on people's faces. As we got more used to that, photo portraits began portraying people in a range of expression rather than trying to create a neutral image of a person's face.

Changing our own perceptions of old photo portraits to view them as neutral rather than grumpy or serious can help us remember that people back then were not a bunch of sourpusses, but people who experienced as wide a range of emotion as we do, including joy and mirth. Unfortunately, we just rarely get to see them in that state before the 1920s.

This article originally appeared last year.

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Education

The fascinating reason why retro cartoon characters all wore this single clothing item

How did we not know this?!

Giphy, Giphy

Stills from The Flintstones and Yogi Bear

Ever notice how so many classic cartoon characters from your childhood had one oddly consistent fashion choice?

Fred Flintstone had that bright blue tie. Yogi Bear had his iconic green one, which, given that Yogi is indeed a bear with zero use for business-casual, he certainly didn’t need. Similarly, there was Huckberry Hound’s red bow tie, Quick Draw McGraw’s bandana, and so on…

It’s not that animators in the ‘60s were weirdly passionate about men’s neck accessories. Nope, these were all part of a clever animation hack.

hanna barbera, animation, cartoons, vintage cartoons, drawings, cartoon network, history, disney Like Yogi, Hanna-Barbera animators were smarter than the average bear. media4.giphy.com

Back in the mid-20th century, studios like Hanna-Barbera were churning out TV cartoons on tiny budgets and impossible schedules. While Disney made a name for itself enlisting entire armies of artists to work on ultra-smooth, hyper-realistic feature films that took years to perfect, Hanna-Barbera had to produce weekly TV shows with a fraction of the time, money, and people.

That’s where “limited animation” came in, a revolutionary technique first pioneered by animators Chuck Jones and John Hubley. While Jones and Hubley approached limited animation as more of a style choice, heads of Hanna-Barbera saw it as a way to save time without sacrificing personality.

Instead of redrawing an entire character for every frame (like Disney did, but more on that later), animators would reuse as much of the drawing as possible, usually by keeping the body still and only moving the mouth, eyes, or head.

But there was one small problem: if a character’s head was moving and their body stayed still, how could you hide that awkward line where the two met? Enter the humble necktie, collar, scarf, or necklace. Basically any neck covering that created a distinct visual separation would do. This made it easy to swap in the actual moving parts without it looking weird.

Even though these creative choices were primarily for practical reasons, they nonetheless gave Hanna-Barbera cartoons a signature aesthetic…one that you simply can’t unsee once you know it’s there

hanna barbera, animation, cartoons, vintage cartoons, drawings, cartoon network, history, disney Yep, this checks out. media0.giphy.com

hanna barbera, animation, cartoons, vintage cartoons, drawings, cartoon network, history, disney So does this one. media2.giphy.com

hanna barbera, animation, cartoons, vintage cartoons, drawings, cartoon network, history, disney And this one. media3.giphy.com

hanna barbera, animation, cartoons, vintage cartoons, drawings, cartoon network, history, disney And this one. media0.giphy.com

hanna barbera, animation, cartoons, vintage cartoons, drawings, cartoon network, history, disney And this one! media0.giphy.com

Take a look a Tom and Jerry, who seem to be the outliers, but really just have no necks to speak of.

history

Our perceptions of smiling have changed dramatically since the 1800s.

The non-smiling precedent had already been set by centuries of painted portraits

Smiling usually indicated that you were a fool or a drunkard

Then along came movies, which may have changed the whole picture

How did we not know this?!

Chinteresting, indeed.

Wait until you see what they brushed their teeth with.

The Romans, in general, weren't big on body hair for men or women.

While we fret over fluoride, the Romans brushed their teeth with pee and mouse brains.

Meanwhile, in ancient Japan, women tried to blacken their teeth

Ear pickers were much prettier than Q-tips. In fact, they were an accessory.

JFK and 10 fellow Navy crew members were stranded on a deserted island in the South Pacific.

"Life was better before the Internet. There, I said it."

In the 1940s, apparently safety hadn't been invented yet.

1. "Mascara that came in a little box, like eyeshadow. There was also a little brush that came with it."

2. "Cream rinse. After shampooing, you'd put a capful of cream rinse in a glass of water and pour the whole thing over your hair to detangle. That was before we had conditioners."

3. "Belted maxi pads."

4. "Sardine cans that came with a key to open them."

5. "TVs or radios that you had to wait for them to 'warm up' for a few seconds before they worked. And who remembers color bars'? When the station would just show colored bars for a minute to give you time to adjust the color on your set?"

6. "A booklet to keep S&H Green Stamps or Blue Chip Stamps."

7. “Clamp-on steel kids’ roller skates.”

9. "The first time Catholic girls were allowed to wear 'stockings' was during their Confirmation. It was a rite of passage, and mine was in 1968. The stockings were scratchy, thigh-high things held up by these weird garter belts with rubbery clips."

10. "Paregoric. It was given to us kids who had diarrhea. It was opium! You won't see that in medicine cabinets anymore."

11. "Darning needles and darning yarn. In the 1960s (more or less), it was still worthwhile to darn socks. But by the 1980s, socks were cheap enough that darning was mostly a thing of the past. Maybe it's just me, though. Does anyone still darn socks?"

12. "A mangle ironing machine."

14. "The little plastic piece you put in the hole on a 45 record that would make it fit and play on the record player."

15. "A tabletop clamp-on meat grinder."

16. "Colored toilet paper."

17. "My grandmother had a telephone desk, similar to a school desk. It had a chair and a small table where the large, heavy rotary desk phone sat, and on the side was a wire rack for the directory and Yellow Pages."

18. "McDonald's french fries used to be cooked in beef tallow. The taste was phenomenally good and nothing like the bland ones of today."

19. "Crank handles to start tractors. There were no push buttons back then."

20. "Toothpaste came in a can! It looked like a 1930s-era whiskey flask and contained pumice powder and flavoring. You'd open the lid, wet your toothbrush, rub it in the powder, and brush your teeth. Then, you'd just repeat the processes as needed."

21.“The little triangle window on a car we called the 'windbreaker'--you had to open that so you could put your window down while driving so there wasn't as much noise. A/C was not standard. Also, curb indicators on cars.”

22.“Pantyhose in eggs.”

23. “One thing that was often seen back in my youth and for a year I also had them but I haven't seen for a couple of decades are metal heel plates (also known as ‘taps’) to prevent boot and shoe heels from wearing down.

24. “Hershey's chocolate bars used to come in foil. Peeling it off was satisfying.”

25. “Jelly-jar drinking glasses with cartoon characters on them.”