More Duchenne Smiles

The Duchenne smile (left) versus the social smile (right). Social smiles use only the mouth muscles. Whereas true smiles, known as Duchenne smiles, cause the eyes to twinkle and the cheeks to rise.

At the turn of the nineteenth century, Napoleon Bonaparte rose to power in France. He was a big deal in the French Revolution. A military and political leader. 

Liberté! Egalité! Fraternité!  All of that. 

In 1802, he was named First Consul for Life. One year later, he named himself Emperor. 

The French government invited Pope Pius VII to officiate his coronation, but at the last minute, Napoleon took the crown from him and placed it on his own head. 

Classic Napoleon. 

Napoleon was lean and famously short. But he had a nice smile. Here’s an excerpt from his own doctor’s assessment in 1802.

“His teeth were fairly good, and mouth perfectly modelled, the upper lip slightly drawn down towards the corner of the mouth, and the chin slightly prominent.”

- Doctor Corvisart, Paris, 1802

Mary Berry, a contemporary writer, saw Napoleon in 1802 and wrote that “his mouth, when speaking...has a remarkable and uncommon expression of sweetness.”

Nice set of teeth. Good mouth. 

Un beau sourire. 

The entire profession of dentistry can be traced to France. In 1210, a guild of barbers was established and split into two groups. One of the groups was trained to perform tooth extractions and complex procedures. Early dentists. 

Then in 1679, the O.G. dentist and father of modern dentistry was born to a modest family from a village in rural France. Pierre Fauchard became a physician, and in 1728 he published his famous book, Le Chirurgien Dentiste. The Surgeon Dentist.

Around the same time Fauchard was writing the first complete scientific description of dentistry, it became fashionable for French scientists to try to assess a person’s character by observing physical traits. 

They called the practice physiognomy, from the Greek, ‘physis’, meaning nature. And ‘gnomon’, meaning ‘judge’ or ‘interpreter.’ 

Today, most consider physiognomy a pseudoscience. At best, quackery. At worst, racism and sexism.

But in the 1700s and 1800s, a lot of smart people thought physical traits like large jaws and handle shaped ears might correlate with criminal behavior. Stuff like that. 

Like I said, quackery. 

But the jury was still out on physiognomy when a French neurologist named Duchenne (doo-shane) joined that party in the 1830s. 

Duchenne thought the physiognomists might be onto something, and he wanted to understand how muscles in human faces contract to express emotion.

Joy. Fear. Worry. Love. 

He placed sharp electrical probes on foreheads, cheeks, and chins. Just beneath the skin. And then he fired the probes to stimulate facial muscles and get them to contract.

The camera was a new invention, and Duchenne bought one. He took photos of the expressions he created.  

Google “Duchenne photos.” 

They’re weird. You’ll laugh. Or at least smirk. 

Duchenne eventually published his work in The Mechanism of Human Facial Expression, and one of his most enduring observations is that smiles resulting from true happiness not only utilize the muscles of the mouth but also those of the eyes. 

That’s the difference between polite smiles and “real” smiles. Eye muscles. 

Eye muscles take a smile from polite to authentic. Genuine. 

Today, genuine smiles are known as Duchenne smiles in his honor.

But you don’t need to read The Mechanism of Human Facial Expression to be able to spot a genuine Duchenne smile. When you see one, you know it. 

That’s what Tailwater is all about.

Duchenne smiles. 

We launched Tailwater to help dentists and their teams create more Duchenne smiles. 

Not for their patients, but for themselves.