Girls Don't Cry

Could anybody imagine Dwight Eisenhower, a five-star general in the United States Army and the 34th president of the United States cry in public? How about John F Kennedy? They may have had the occasional misty eye when the flag passed by, but for the most part, they kept their emotions private.

In the US, there has been a real role reversal when it comes to tears. It is now men who are often seen shedding tears in public, the usual grudging masculine tears or the occasional real spill. There are acceptable times and places for the shedding, though. Soccer fields, basketball courts or tennis courts seem to be the most suitable places. Whether red-eyed in defeat or elated with victory, American men can now be visibly moist.

Of course, that's always been somewhat true. Sportsmen who have proven their heroism on a playing field have always been given a dispensation. But nowhere is the turn to tears more noticeable than in the ranks of US male politicians. Edmund Muskie, the democratic governor of Maine, later a senator and the Secretary of State in the Carter administration was out the presidential race for weeping while defending his wife's reputation back in 1972 after a newspaper had launched a personal attack on his wife.  The press shattered his image as 'calm' and 'reasoned' by reporting that he actually broke down and cried although Muskie later stated that  what appeared to be tears were actually melted snowflakes. 

Those days are long gone.  In 1996, Bob Dole, the button-downed Republican candidate often cried on the campaign trail. When he mentioned his experience as a valiant soldier or his tough childhood in Kansas, he choked up. How else was he going to reassure his audience that he was, indeed, one of them?  And Bill Clinton to date remains a master of the quivering lip and dampened eye, all bulletproof signs of unshakable integrity. Clinton also represents a touchy-feely generation, a lot of whom occasionally gather in coliseums to celebrate Transcendence en mass while crying openly.

More recently we have had John Boehner, the current Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, a Republican from Ohio, who sobs, in the form of quivering lip and wet lashes, at times of heightened public emotions. This apparently gives Boehner and his macho persona—the Camel cigarettes, deep voice and a tough childhood that included running cases of beer in his father's bar—credibility.

It's an irony that the only politicians who can't cry in America today are women. That's what America has come to.

On September 28, 1987, when Rep. Patricia Schroeder withdrew from the 1988 Presidential race, she burst into tears and said, "I couldn't figure out a way to run. There must be a way, but I haven't figured it out yet."  She was hounded for her tears for years to come. Everyone had their say. See, we knew women were wimps, their place is in the kitchen.

Interestingly enough, a 2014 survey by the Pew Research Center finds some interesting facts about why women don't reach the upper echelons in leadership in politics and business: because they are   held to higher standards and Americans aren't ready.

This is what you are up against, Hillary, now that you are 'finally', running. Men can cry and you can't.

And I'm struggling to figure out if we can call this progress.

The writer is an engineer-turned-journalist.