Crying Men Accepted More than Crying Women
Filed in archive Mind Games by Terah Shelton on October 24, 2007
This really doesn't have anything to do with health, but I thought it was worth writing about. First, men were respected more than women. Next, men could vote before women. Then, man made more money than women. Now, man can cry and still be respected more than women. Boy, do we have it rough.
After ellen degeneres
pleaded and cried on TV last week for her adopted puppy to be returned, not only did she cause a media fire storm, but sparked a debate about the perception of woman crying versus men crying. According to a Penn State study, it is more acceptable for a man to woman than a woman.What year is this? We may be a year away from having the first woman president and we're still talking about the sensitivities of women. Have we made any progress? Give me a break!
What they found is that reactions depended on the type of crying, and who was doing it. A moist eye was viewed much more positively than open crying, and males got the most positive responses.
"Women are not making it up when they say they're damned if they do, damned if they don't," said Stephanie Shields, the psychology professor who conducted the study. "If you don't express any emotion, you're seen as not human, like Mr. Spock on 'Star Trek,"' she said. "But too much crying, or the wrong kind, and you're labeled as overemotional, out of control, and possibly irrational."
That comes as no surprise to Suzyn Waldman, a well-known broadcaster of Yankee games on New York's WCBS Radio.
Earlier this month, she choked up for several seconds on live radio after the Yankees had just been eliminated from the playoffs. She was describing the scene as manager Joe Torre's coaches choked up themselves, watching him at the podium and foreseeing the end of an era.
Her tearful report quickly became an Internet hit, and she was mocked far and wide, especially on radio, with her voice, for example, played over the song "Big Girls Don't Cry."
"This turned into something pretty ugly," Waldman said in an interview. "I don't throw around the word 'sexist,' but this was as sexist as it gets."
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