"I like you when you smile"

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To be honest, that was borderline flirting or just practical advice. If you're like me and have gotten several comments about having weird or awkward facial expressions-- you're probably sensitive to such comments. Your statement kinda assumes the negative, when a person may just mean he/she likes seeing you visibly happy.

I won't say its not annoying tho, I think an insult would be "you never show emotion".

It's usually flirting when someone says this to you. Guys say that to me often and I'm NT and happen to have a particularly expressive face. But I'm often grumpy when I'm out in public.

I think it's a form of social terrorism when guys roll up on you all like "Dayymm guurrll...why you frownin?" I'm like, "None of your business." I feel like guys like that tend to pick on shy/quiet girls that they think will be too embarrassed to stick up for themselves.

I get comments similar to this. They usually tell me I look like I want to murder someone.

I was "trained" early, early on - smile - people like good little girls who smile. I'm told that I have a nice smile, but it is there when it is not appropriate to be there. For example, if a conversation "shifts" where the speaker is in one track that I can feign an interested response to, and then - this is not sexist I have just never had a man do this, so maybe they do - she starts crying ... oh, boy. I have to touch my face to make sure I am not smiling. It also helps manage my nerves and then, yes, it is creepy. I throw out what I've got and sometimes smiles calm a situation - but they can also cheese people off and distance them - and at the point I am that anxious, distance is okay. I am not trying to put one over on anyone - it's just been something I grabbed in childhood and it got reinforced. I'm trying to unlearn it for balance because I want to be professional and appear more assertive - I think I do get labelled as a push-over because of it. I don't think it is a confident, assertive smile. I think my uncertainty shows.

I get a lot of comments about this, but I was surprised several years back when people started telling me that because I thought I laughed (and when one laughs, one also smiles) too much, the exact opposite. People usually think I'm depressed with my blank expression, so they will randomly ask me if everything's alright when I'm fine. Also, once when I was wandering around a grocery store, a random person passed me and told me, "Cheer up and smile! It's a great day today!" and went on his way. I ran into him again later when something funny came to mind and he gave me the thumbs-up and said "Good job!"

Yes, exactly! Guys do this to me, and then look really surprised when I glare at them fiercely, and then they sort of hold up their hands and back away...

Incidentally, I was at the airport the other day, walking along minding my own business, and some random TSA employee caught my eye and called out, "Smile!" I was like, "Not again." And also: "I'm at the airport at 5:30 am, what's there to smile about?"

Something similar to this is that most girls (NT and ASD) have been trained to cry when they're mad because it's not socially acceptable for women to be angry. It's a defense mechanism, but it's kind of disturbing when you think about it.

Temple Grandin once suggested that aspie men and women both should train themselves to cry during meltdowns because no one will fire you for crying, but you CAN be fired for yelling. SMART advice.

So true. I cry ridiculously easily. Sometimes people have gotten mad at me for things or wanted to get me in trouble for things, and I started crying, even though I was trying not to, and then they just said forget it and told me it was fine. I felt sort of guilty about it, like I was manipulating them, even though it wasn't on purpose.