Not a model? You can still ‘smize’ with vigor

With our faces covered from the nose down by masks when we go out in public, our eyes are more important communication tools than ever. That’s where the ability to smize like you mean it comes into play.

The term “smize” entered the lexicon in 2009 when Tyra Banks first used it on the 13th season of her competition series, “America’s Next Top Model.” Banks taught the contestants how to bring life and expression to their eyes — to “smile with your eyes” — while keeping the rest of their face neutral. (Smile + Eyes = Smize.)

The term quickly took hold in modeling and photography. Cyril Kollock, the director of Look Model Agency in San Francisco, says it’s part of model vocabulary now. The word has also been in use in Europe for the past decade, says London photographer Frederic Aranda, who has shot portraits of everyone from Pharrell Williams to Prince Philip. (Pharrell is smizing in his photo, Aranda notes. Prince Philip, alas, is looking sideways.)

The word also caught on in pop culture, was added to Urban Dictionary in 2009, and rose in usage with another combination word: selfie. If you can smize while you selfie, all the better.

While Banks may have popularized the idea, smizing has long existed in culture. The subjects of Renaissance paintings including Paolo Veronese’s “Portrait of a Woman” and Albrecht Durer’s “The Furlegerin With Braided Hair” are smizing hard, and the silent films of the 1910s and ’20s are dependent on smizing. Actors Charlie Chaplin and Greta Garbo were among the most prolific smizers of their era.

But go to a mirror and try to bring life to your eyes without actually smiling and you’ll see it is harder than it looks. I don’t just want my smize to be sufficient, I want people to be able to read my smize from 6 feet of social distance.

Banks’ usual advice is to think of something warm and desirable and let that feeling wash over your expression. When I’ve tried that, I just look confused, so I asked model Laila Rachki if she had a different method for getting the perfect smize. I worked with Rachki in 2016 for a Chronicle photo shoot at the Marin Civic Center, and her smize was so intense you could see it through sunglasses.

In addition to The Chronicle, Rachki has modeled for Banana Republic, the North Face and Levi’s and walked the runway at Milan Fashion Week. She’s also the creator and cohost of the “Model Lite” podcast with Melissa Haro, where they discuss stories from behind the scenes in the industry. Their May 12 episode will be dedicated to smizing.

For Rachki, smizing is as much a feeling as it is a facial expression. To have that inner ebullience, she says you have to be relaxed, which isn’t easy during a pandemic.

One of the ways she practiced smizing early in her career was to look in the mirror and isolate the movement of different parts of her face. She’d start by smiling, then would let her mouth drop back to a neutral expression while keeping her eyes as much like they were when she was smiling as possible.

“One of the mistakes people make is thinking smizing is just about the eyes,” Rachki says. “It’s about everything around your eyes, too. Look at what your cheekbones are doing. Look at what your eyebrows are doing when you smile.”

Rachki says that, “like a smile, everyone’s smize is different.” She suggests I think about something I want or something that makes me happy to keep the lift in my eyelids and the intention in my focus. For me, that something is life beyond coronavirus.

I thought about museums and venues being open again. I thought about what it will be like to hear live music without streaming it. I thought about the people I can’t wait to see outside the square views of Zoom conferencing. And it helped! I’m prepping my smize for whenever that day is, when we can start gathering again. The way things look now, it’s hard to imagine masks and distance won’t be a part of those first gatherings. When I finally get to see the people I’ve been missing in person again, I want them to see the happiness on the part of my face that’s uncovered. In 2020, the smize have it.

“Like a smile, everyone’s smize is different.” Model Laila Rachki