Resting B*itch Face first appeared in Cosmopolitan magazine in the early 2000s. Celebrities such as Kanye West, Kristen Stewart, Ben Affleck, Anna Kendrick, Louis XIV and Queen Elizabeth II have all been associated with the condition.
A 2015 study by facial recognition experts Noldus Information Technology analysed thousands of expressions, assigned values to them, and found that a typical resting face sits at about 97 per cent neutrality. However, people with RBF sit at around 94 per cent. We humans are so observant it only takes a 3 per cent difference to judge a look as negative instead of neutral or positive.
Resting Goober Face is a more recent concept, having made its first appearance anywhere in this article today. As a result, there is no research on it. However, if we are sensitive to RBF, you would assume we would detect RGF, too.
Imagine you arrive at a job interview, your CV is perfect, you dress appropriately, you’re on time and you answer your prospective employer’s questions confidently; however, when you are not talking, you let your mouth hang open like Homer Simpson thinking about food. The interviewer will notice this, and their confidence will leave them.
Most people with Resting Goober Face don’t know they have it. I only found out about mine when Radio Hauraki posted a video of me conducting a phone interview with Dai Henwood. While listening to Dai’s excellent NZ Warriors analysis, my head tips to the side, my eyes glaze over and my mouth gapes like a humphead parrotfish. It’s classic RGF. You can be fully engaged in, and entertained by, a conversation but communicate with your face that “I’m a confused goober”.
To see how common my RBF is, I undertook an investigation — analysing some recent public appearances. The results were shocking. My time on the otherwise excellent TV shows Taskmaster NZ, Guy Montgomery’s Guy Mont-Spelling Bee and The Traitors NZ are all marred by my horrific Resting Goober Face. I asked work friends, family and workmates and was told: “Oh yeah, you think with your mouth open; you always have; sometimes I worry you’ll start dribbling.”
Luckily, there is an easy solution to RGF. Use your nose. Mouth breathing is a common cause of Resting Goober Face. If you’re puffing through your trap, it will hang open. Breathe through your snout, and the mouth remains closed.
As it happens, Kiwi parents have been pushing back against Resting Goober Face for generations. My dad tried to warn me when I was a kid. He would say: “For God’s sake, son, shut your gob. You look like an idiot. Are you trying to catch flies in there?”
Popular culture also rages against RGF’s slack-jawed approach to life. The slang term “mouth-breather”, defined as “someone with so little intelligence they never learned to breathe through their nose”, re-entered the mainstream in 2016 thanks to the TV show Stranger Things. In season one, episode four, a girl named Eleven asks her new friend Mike what a “mouth-breather” is, and he answers: “You know, a dumb person. A knucklehead.”
For better or worse, we humans read each other’s expressions intently. We say a lot more than we might like when we aren’t speaking. Operating your face like a goldfish is unlikely to send the message you want. That’s why we in the Resting Goober Face community must take control. Imagine what we could achieve if we just shut our gobs?
