It doesn't a l w a y s need to be 'fine'.

Warning; this blog entry contains analyses of human behaviour and emotion.

I recently wrote a pretty steep critique on with Katherine Heigl as the leading lady. As much as I loathed the film there's something about her girl-next-door-y cinematic aura that made me want to watch The Ugly Truth27 Dresses again on my sickday at home. And while the latter film is heaps cuter, there's one thing that majorly bothers me in it. Not because they decided to put it in the film, but because countless teenage girls will watch this film, and subconsciously decide that the way Heigl is acting in it, is the way society expects us to act.

But let's get to the point here. The character played by Heigl, Jane, is remarkably bad at speaking her mind. Even to the people closest to her. Even when the people closest to her are making her hurt more than ever. Even when she loses the guy she has been madly in love with for years, to her sister. Even when her father gives her deceased mother's wedding dress to her sister, who is to marry her dream man.

Yet, in all these situations, a forced smile stretching from New York to Calcutta is observable on her baby-skinned face, and the words "I'm fine" and "that's great" are repeated as if she'd just had an orgasm (albeit a fake one). Why, oh WHY? As someone raised to have a mind of her own, this fact baffles me no end.

I can get behind the tying her boss' tie, doing his laundry etc, as this is clearly just an attempt to be close to, and needed by him. What I can't seem to answer is whether this really is accepted, normal - or even worse - expected, behaviour? Then I thought that probably is the case, in the United States, or the States of Smiles and Sunshine, where everything always IS f***ing fantastic! I can't say I have lived in the States since I was the age of a Kindergardener, but if this kind of behaviour is the reality over there - I can't say I particularly want to in the future, either.

I've seen hints of this in England, where mostly everything is meant to be 'alright'. In fact this word is so ingrained in the culture over here, that people exchange this word as a question itself - supplemented with a 'y', short for 'you' in the form of 'y'alright?' Luckily, the Britons have a commonplace reply to this which is much better than simply lying and saying 'good, and yourself?'. This being namely 'not too bad'. This very expression nearly comes close to the bleak expression of the Germanians and Scandinavians 'it's going', which leaves the questioner neutral for an answer, after all things can't ever really be so great that you'd want to brag about them to your fellow human being!

OK so we have slightly moved off topic here, but I truly think that the 'everything is fine, always, and if it isn't - don't freckin' show it'-mentality is unhealthy. And no, I'm not saying this because my boyfriend is a psychologist and has brainwashed me to think so. I honestly belive that if you can't tell your own sister that she's just stolen the man of your dreams and that she's walking all over your heart in the process - then there will be serious consequences to your mental health. More importantly, it's probably a sign of you not having very much self-respect.

So to all the Jane's out there: speak up or move to Northern Europe for a while to learn a thing or two about a beautiful thing called honesty.