Kim Kardashian has undeniably gorgeous skin – when she isn’t struggling with a nasty attack of psoriasis. While you might assume that’s thanks to the pricey care regime, plastic surgeons, and painful laser treatments, the beauty mogul revealed this weekend that her secret to good skin is “don’t smile.”
According to Cosmopolitan , the Keeping Up with the Kardashians star appeared in Mario Dedivanovic’s Master Class. When a fan asked what her secret is to good skin, she said that she doesn’t smile.
It may sound depressing, but W Magazine reports that there is good science behind the reality star’s advice. A recent study found that smiling increases the age that people perceive you to be. A test group evaluated a bunch of images showing people smiling or not smiling, and the grinners were all ranked about two years older on average than those who kept a straight face. The results were published in a May 2017 issue of Psychonomic Bulletin and Review Journal .
Researchers suggest this effect may come from the fact that wrinkles around the eyes are exaggerated when you smile.
Her husband Kanye West doesn’t smile for an entirely different reason. He thinks it makes you look less cool.
“You know the paparazzi, always come up to me, ‘Why you not smiling?’ and I think, not smiling makes me smile,” he said, according to the Huffington Post .
“When you see paintings in an old castle, people are not smiling ’cause it just wouldn’t look as cool.”
There’s another reason you rarely see the 38-year-old grinning in photos. Kardashian says that she stopped smiling after giving birth to her daughter North. During her pregnancy, she suffered from preeclampsia, which caused her to bloat, causing the paparazzi to comment on her weight. That body shaming caused her to stop being so friendly when she was approached by the media.
“After I had the baby, I was like, ‘These are the same people that made fun of me, and posted the stories that were so awful, calling me fat for something I couldn’t control.’”
“I don’t want to smile for them. I don’t want to be out. Even if I was more confident, I just didn’t feel like being that girl who was going to be smiling for every photo.” she added.
The study on how smiling changes the perception of your age also found that a surprised face seems to make you look younger because it smooths out the wrinkles around your eyes. Individuals in the study who had a surprised face were rated as an average of two years younger than their real age. Maybe looking shocked will be the next big secret in beauty.
