Scientists Say 'Resting Bitch Face' Is A Real Thing

A quick poll for all resting bitch face sufferers: How many times throughout your lifetime have you had to explain to people that you're not angry, that's just how your face looks? Dozens? Hundreds? Thousands of times, even? 

And let's not even THINK about all the times someone's told you to "smile more."

Well, for all of the trouble you've gone through, here's something that might make you feel better about having resting bitch face: Scientists just studied it and concluded that it's a legit phenomenon. 

If you've got it, here's why your face looks perpetually pissed.

According to CNN, last year researchers from Noldus International Technology — a company that designs software for observational and behavioral research — used their programs to look at the faces of celebrities with infamous resting bitch face, including Kanye West, Kristen Stewart, and Anna Kendrick. They ran images of their faces through the "FaceReader" software, which produced a percentage of underlying emotions it picked up in the face. Then, they compared those percentages to "neutral" (non-resting bitch face) expressions.

The software registered an average face at about 97 percent neutral and 3 percent "underlying expressions," CNN reported. (To put it simply, that means there were traces of emotions like sadness or anger in the face, but the majority of it was a blank expression.) 

But when the FaceReader software processed the celebrities' resting bitch faces, it picked up "underlying expressions" as high as 6 percent.

"We see that people who have this (resting bitch face) expression (have) double the amount of emotionality expressed," said Abbe Macbeth, one of the researchers who worked on the project.

Basically, if you've got resting bitch face, you tend to have more underlying emotions than the average person. 

So does that mean your subconscious is angry? Where are those underlying emotions coming from? What's your deal?

Macbeth says there's not a single, definite reason as to why you're giving off more of those pesky ~underlying emotions~ than the average person, but your culture or gender could have an impact on whether people think you are. (Tricky, tricky.)

"Eastern European people are seen as very stoic and not showing a lot of emotion and ... a lot of the people touted as having (resting bitch face) are women," Macbeth told CNN.

If you want to put your face through the FaceReader software to see if you truly have resting bitch face, just head over to their website.