Queen Elizabeth has it. So does Victoria Beckham, Kanye West and Kristen Stewart.
All of them have been mocked by internet commenters for having a certain unintentional expression when their faces are not in motion - a look best described as vaguely annoyed, maybe a little judgy, perhaps slightly bored.
But now international behavioural researchers, Jason Rogers and Abbe Macbeth, and innovation firm Noldus Information Technology, decided to investigate: What is RBF (Resting Bitch Face) and who has it?
"We wanted this to be fun and kind of tongue-in-cheek, but also to have legitimate scientific data backing it up," Macbeth said.
The researchers enlisted Noldus's FaceReader, a sophisticated tool engineered to identify specific expressions based on a catalogue of more than 10,000 images of human faces. The software, which can examine faces through a live camera, a photograph or a video clip, maps 500 points on the human face, then analyses the image and assigns an expression based on eight basic human emotions: happiness, sadness, anger, fear, surprise, disgust, contempt, and "neutral."
FaceReader, being a piece of software and therefore immune to gender bias, detected RBF in male and female faces in equal measure. Which means that the idea of RBF as a predominantly female phenomenon has little to do with facial physiology and more to do with social norms.
Worried that you might have RBF? Now you can find out for sure. After publishing their results in October, Rogers and Macbeth invited members of the public to submit their own faces for analysis. Guys and gals alike are welcome to email photos of their most "neutral" facial expressions to [email protected], and FaceReader will tell you if you're actually expressionless - or if you and the queen have RBF in common.
