Masculine Tears

I’ve always found it somehow too complicated for me to understand why men usually tend to avoid crying (especially in public) and hold back their tears. Admittedly, and unlike women, men are usually taught, from an early age, that crying is a girly thing, that tears were meant to fall on the softer cheeks, that men simply don’t cry and accordingly they’re trained not to break into tears in front of others. Growing up with that conviction, men would most likely claim that crying is a sign of vulnerability, an undesired human need; something they intentionally avoid, throughout the course of their lives, in order to preserve their image of mighty manliness.

On the day my uncle died few years back, I kept attentively observing my father, almost feeling the intensity of his grief in the air around me and hoping to see him drop a tear or two over his brother’s death that I thought might help provide him with at least some comfort. But my hopes were shattered every time I looked at him strongly pulling himself together. However, and on that same night, after everyone was gone, I ran accidently into my father, sitting alone in a dim-lighted room, his hands covering his face and a horrifying sound of weeping seemed to shake my world. I, carefully, walked out of that room surprisingly smiling and relieved that my father has finally surrendered to his inner, irresistible urge to cry, and accordingly found some relief through it.

Just last week, on the other hand, I was in a hospital’s waiting area. As I was tediously waiting for my name to be called, a lady with her two children sat next to me. I couldn’t help but to notice the way she furiously scolded her almost five-year-old son every time the poor child cried out loud. Despite the irritated mother’s several attempts, the young boy was annoyingly crying non-stop. Then, as soon as the mother spelled out the magic words; "dear, men don’t cry! Don’t you already know that? You’re a MAN. Only girls cry” and peace finally found its way back into the room.

Whatever be the reason, we all know men just can’t cry (or at least not in front of others). But surely they do cry, probably not to the world, but behind closed doors, to themselves. However, the question remains, why men are burdened to meet the social or cultural expectations by being ‘tough as a rock’? Why men are supposed to shield themselves against all human emotions and avoid those transparent drops to fall down their faces? Why the teary eyes are a source of unforgivable disgrace according to the incomprehensible laws of men’s world? And why men strongly believe that “one who cries is not a man” ?