"He always smiled, and he always chuckled, but inside he did not notice anyone, did not care; it was his body that smiled, nodded and shook hands. Nothing touched his mind, which remained remote."
Everyone loves
Purity Sue.
They can't help it! She's
practically perfect in every way. The Stepford Smiler is much like
Purity Sue: she's bright, chipper, and an all-around pleasant person to be with.
It's all a lie, of course.
The Stepford Smiler is obsessed with projecting an image of wholesome happiness in order to be accepted by her peers. Tragically enough, they'd probably
accept her for who she is regardless of her self-imposed
Masquerade. Her flawlessly crafted facade hides a real person that's usually breaking like so much fine china in order to keep up the deception.
These are the three main types of Stepford Smiler:
Type A: Depressed The character seems to be happy, cheerful, is always smiling and seems to live a perfect life,
but inside she feels very sad and depressed.
Type B: Empty The character seems to be kind and cheerful, but her
True Self is
motiveless and
hollow.
Type C: Unstable The smile
hides a very unstable and crazy person.
Type A
Heroines or show co-stars that are Stepford Smilers can either be played straight (they really are that
shallow) or to gain viewer sympathy as they struggle to live up to their own impossible ideals.
Villainesses like the
Evil Matriarch who are Stepford Smilers are usually played one of two ways: it can either humanize them, much like the heroine, or it can accentuate their evil by contrasting it with their soullessness. Feminine pronouns are used throughout this trope because the Stepford Smiler is a
traditionally female role, though there are many male examples too. Sometimes, they're even a couple.
The Type B's mask itself can also hide a terrible secret...
there is nothing behind it. The void is either a result of using up so much energy
pretending to be normal that nothing is left over, or because there was
nothing there to begin with. The
trope-naming Stepford Wives fall into this second category, naturally.
Scared yet? It gets worse.
There is a very good chance that she is dosed up on prescription tranquilizers or antidepressants (Valium, Xanax, and/or Prozac are staple favorites), often to the point of dependence. With or without drugs, if a Stepford Smiler smiles long enough without
cracking, she can
become the mask and turn into a Type C. Some Stepford Smilers buy into the dead
Barbie smiles to such a degree that they care for
nothing other than maintaining appearances, having money, making sure their
hair is just right, and improving their social standing, all of which are pursued with equally
Social Darwinistic means. Essentially, they become the materialist equivalent of the
Nietzsche Wannabe. Type C characters sometimes have
another kind of smile behind the fake one.
Not every
Housewife is a Stepford Smiler, obviously. They often encounter one as a nemesis instead, in a post-
High School example of the
Alpha Bitch. Still, some readers describe
any Housewife raising her own children as a Stepford Smiler
on little if any evidence, bringing in the
Unfortunate Implications about "staying at home = women being slaves of
those evil men."
Science does add some credence to the trope, as those who default to a half-smile expression tend to report a generally better mood, regardless of any outside factor. However, this does not extend to a full on fake demi-
Slasher Smile, suggesting that even the person's brain chemistry isn't fooled by the facade.
The Stepford Smiler gets her name (as does the
Stepford Suburbia in which she lives) from the book and later movies
The Stepford Wives, about a village whose men conspire to create the Barbie perfect wife, all with similar eerie smiles.
See also
Beneath the Mask,
Bitch in Sheep's Clothing,
Broken Ace,
Comedic Sociopathy,
Evil Matriarch,
Extreme Doormat,
The Fake Cutie,
Faux Affably Evil,
I Just Want to Be Normal,
Mary Sue,
Masquerade,
Think Happy Thoughts,
Uncanny Valley Girl,
Yandere, and the darker variants of
Minnesota Nice. The
Crapsaccharine World is basically this trope upscaled to include the entire society.
Contrast with the
Straw Nihilist,
The Stoic,
The Pollyanna,
Yamato Nadeshiko.
Compare/Contrast with
The Snark Knight, whose demeanor is typically the
inverse of the Stepford Smiler, and the
Stepford Snarker, whose motives are the same, but whose mask is made of
snark rather than smiles.
Contrast
Drama Queen.
8=D
