Not Smiling in Georgia

How do Georgians know you’re from the U.S.A. within a few seconds? It’s easy: You flash that big American smile and bare your shiny white teeth. But what if you’re an American who doesn’t particularly like to smile randomly throughout the day? Why do I need to smile for every greeting? Why must I grin and chit-chat with Uber drivers to prevent my score from sinking?

I love Georgia. Let me say it again -- from the taxi drivers who never smiled to the officials who greeted me with an expressionless nod and handshake -- I raise my glass of Georgian red wine to you. Thank you, Mr. Taxi Driver, for acknowledging my existence with a quick nod and grunt, and barking at the guard in front of the think tank to make sure I had arrived at the right destination. Kudos to Mr. Dour Government Official, for taking the extra time out of your busy schedule to explain the stories behind the story.

There are several explanations for why people from Georgia and other countries might not smile as much as Americans or for the same reasons, as the cohorts in the Master of Arts in Global Policy program learned during a seminar by Dr. Sinisa Vukovic, associate director of the Conflict Management Program at Johns Hopkins’ School of Advanced International Studies. One possibility is that people in more diverse societies -- with many immigrants -- learned to smile more as a way to form social bonds, Olga Khazan wrote in The Atlantic on May 3, 2017. But the no-smile rule can’t be broadly applied, especially to large cities such as Tbilisi that attract people from around the world. In the hospitality industry, one wonders whether some waiters and front-desk staff have been advised to “smile” at the Americans. Definitely not all of them, which is just fine by me.

As a very unscientific experiment, I decided not to smile while I explored Tbilisi one afternoon to see if anyone would recognize me as an American. Because I look ethnically ambiguous, I discovered that as long as I stayed mum and didn’t smile, people in the shops or restaurants would start by speaking to me in Georgian.

Just consider these case studies:

Case 1: Sitting in a cafe courtyard, cooling my heels after a long walk, when a Georgian man walks up to chat.

Georgian man: Gamarjoba, something something something something?

Me: Blank stare, shrug, not smiling.

Georgian man: Something something russ-something?

Me: confused look

Georgian man: Hablas espanol?

Me: frown

Georgian man: something something hayeren (My cohort, Avak, says this is Armenian.)

Me: nyet

Case 2: Not smiling at the wine and gift store

Owner: Gamarjoba

Case 3: Smiling at the clothing shop.

Sales employee: Hello

Case 4: Smiling at the restaurant

Waiter: Hello

Case 5: Misreading sign, accidentally walking into men’s bathroom at the mall, freezing in tracks. Not smiling.

Men: (No gamarjoba, but yelling at me in Georgian)

The attached photos support the thesis, sort of. For starters, the bartender and front-door man at our hotel did not smile at me and I did not smile at them. However, once I asked them in English if I could take their photos, the experiment went off-track and grins appeared. I asked them to please not smile because I needed unsmiling Georgians, which only resulted in more smiles and some laughter and photo retake after retake. You may, unfortunately, see a glimmer of a smile in their photos.

-- Stephanie S., Cohort 4