goofy aspergian smile

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I have noticed this expressive similarity in a few people. admittedly i do not know that many autistic people. Other than several family members i have observed autistic characteristics of, i Personally know of only myself, and a girl i went to highschool with.

what i am talking about is when you get these people to genuinely smile, it is a large, somewhat goofy expression, a momentary complete indulgence of an emotion of amusement. The expression appears to border loss of control of it, though it usually lasts only a couple seconds. Very different than the smooth balanced smiles of neurotypical individuals.
I had known first of myself to do this, long before i knew what autism was, and used to hate it the few times i by chance saw myself smiling in this way in a mirror, or on a recording. I thought it looked so stupid.

Now that i have seen other autistic people display this expression, i have more positive feelings about it. It is as though it is an expression i can actually understand, unlike the many expressions of the NTs which i usually misinterpret. I hate the term NT by the way, though it does serve an identifying function.

At one one time or another I have seen Alex, Jack, Kirsten, and most recently Kerry Magro, which spawned my desire to share this observance and discuss it. I have not interacted a whole lot with the girl i know from my highschool on the spectrum, we have been in mutual circles of friends, and she is rather more socially withdrawn than i am. I wasn't aware she had a diagnosis, but she is a friend of my wifes, and she spoke with her after we identified the aspergian condition in myself. However i do think i have witnessed a similar expression a few times of her.

Anyone else noticed this before, or can see what i am speaking of after considering it?

I have one of those aspie smiles too. I also have a normal smile., a nice big super model toothy grin (helps that all my top teeth are naturally straight).
By the way. Where I come from NT stands for Northern Territory, which is where i am from making me a Territorian xD
My aspie friends also have this aspie smile, though more my best friend (also female) its her ONLY smile. where as me and my other friend whos a guy, we have a teh normal smile and the aspie smile.
I notice when i do this smile i raise my shoulders and screw my face up and have this big cheesy grin on my face.
its kinda like a "cute manga smile"
I like my friends aspie smile the most though, his is so cute, he rarely does it though, i rarely do mine, i wish he'd smile more.

would you say your more normal appearing smile is a learned behavior, or is it a natural variant for a somewhat different emotion? I know i occasionally employ fake smiles and laughs in conversing with Northern Territorians, i shutter to wonder how poorly adapted they are, im sure in my case they look nothing like a model.

I definately do it too, its so embarrassing.
It happens more when I am anxious, or having any emotionally intense experience.
It is only in a social situation that I have noticed it.
I have a friend who pays out on me for it - (in sortof a nice way)

This is why I don't smile. I knew I was hideous. Now I feel even more self-conscious about my smile but will have everybody criticising me to smile, I am debating to myself whether to have all of my top teeth taken out and put false teeth in. Either that or I will f*****g kill myself. Now everybody knows I have AS just by smiling, and I don't want everybody knowing I have AS. I know others here will convince me that I must love the whole world knowing that I have AS, but I don't. Why not convince somebody who has cancer to love to want the whole world knowing they have cancer?

If someone tells me to smile, for photographs for example, I have no idea what I look like and usually do look pretty goofy. A genuine, candid smile isn't too bad.

Joe90, there is no cure for ASD but self-hatred and accompanying depression are treatable.

But....we're not physically goofy? It's just the way we smile, right?

I've been told by people who know me fairly well that the goofiness of my smile determines whether I'm faking it or not. If I'm faking it, my smile looks completely normal, but if it's genuine it looks goofy as hell. I used to be sort of self-conscious about it, but I've been told that it's "cute", so I'm a bit more comfortable with it now. Funny enough, I can't fake my actual smile

Um...yeah, this is me

-
I scare me sometimes

As for my smile, let's just say that I try to avoid showing teeth in an attempt to not look like an idiot.

I've always been told you can tell that I am autistic in my early childhood photos becuase I had a fake smile and this "look" in my eyes. I eventualy just took the vogue approach and stopped smiling in my pictures.

I read an article that said that people preferred the laughing sounds of autistic children to the laughing sounds of NT children. It didn't say why, but maybe it has to do with the autistic laughter being totally unguarded, like the smile in this thread.

I learned, in childhood, to reign in my emotional expression, so that people wouldn't be freaked out by the strength of my feelings and so that I wouldn't accidentally do something stupid, like knock something over because of not paying attention.

As an adult, years ago, one time a friend told me she found my smile demonic looking. But I'm hoping that was just her. Nobody else has ever said anything even remotely like that. Though now I wonder...