Can we please stop asking Victoria Beckham this stupidly sexist question?

Victoria Beckham is famous for quite a few things.

Popstar of the 90s, fashion designer of New York Fashion Week fame, one half of the world’s most talked about marriage for its ability to outlast the even the most generous of forecasts.

We know her as a mum-of-four, a woman of impeccable style, and British royalty in so much as Posh and Becks have their own nickname and certainly their own invites to Windsor weddings.

And yet, despite the talent, the wealth, the fame, it’s Victoria Beckham’s face we’re really addicted to.

Every time her “famous scowl” is papped by strangers, every time her “resting bitch face” looks back at us, every time her “constantly stern face” is thrown across the internet, the papers, the magazines, we nod with the smugness of jealous commoners, sure in our knowledge that a woman who doesn’t smile is a woman who isn’t happy.

Oh, and definitely a woman who is a total snob. Ice queen.

If only she’d smile, we say. She has so much potential!

And so we ask her. All the time. Victoria, oh, Victoria, why don’t you just crack a goofy, glistening grin and show us your pearly whites?

This time asking the same, inane question, was Vogue Netherlands.

Forget the nearly AUD$70 million she has made in profits from her fashion label, forget her remarkably legitimate reputation as a designer and forget her wickedly successful period as a popstar, the one thing the world wants to talk about from Vogue’s feature is Backham cracking a joke at her own expense about the fact she doesn’t smile. (Since when did women with scowls crack jokes?)

David Beckham famously kissed his daughter on the lips and people actually had a problem with it. The Mamamia Outloud team discuss.

“David and I have a lot of fun together. If I really was as miserable as I look in some of those paparazzi pictures, my children wouldn’t be as happy as they are. And I certainly wouldn’t be married anymore,” the former Spice Girl told Vogue Netherlands this month.

Of course, it’s not the first time we have asked her why she won’t let us take control of her expressions (just for a moment!) to show how much potential (!!) she would have if she just tried to smile.

You’d be so much prettier if you smiled, we urge.

“I smile in family pictures. When you’re in a position to be paparazzi-ed just walking down the street, you’d look a little daft if you were smiling all the time,” she told T Magazine in 2013.

She also said this, to Vogue’s 73 Questions in 2015, after being asked the same thing:

“I’m smiling on the inside. I feel that I have a responsibility to the fashion community [to be serious].”

Oh, and this, to The Sunday Times‘ Style magazine in 2016, when she was asked about it. Again.

“I don’t know if it’s the years of being photographed and the criticism but I just feel exposed and vulnerable and uncomfortable, and I can’t be myself. I can’t wait till I’m off [the red carpet] and we can all just have a drink, throw our heads back, and who cares if your lip gloss has worn off? You can relax.”

Not only are we addicted to Beckham’s face, but we’re addicted to the status of her likability. We need to see her smile more to like her more, but her husband? He can scowl all he likes, for the same rules don’t apply.

An angry man is a passionate one. An angry woman? Well, she’s surely damaged and sad.

Victoria Beckham can smile, or Victoria Beckham can scowl. But until we’re asking the Ian Somerhalders, the Leonardo DiCaprios, the Zac Efrons, Robert Pattinsons, Ryan Goslings, Mark Wahlbergs and definitely the Ben Afflecks of the world, perhaps our focus on Beckham’s face has far more to do with gender than genuine concern.

But thanks for trying anyway.