Pass the tissues

I worked a long day shift today and the discussion in the nurses sitting room at lunch time centred around the lovely, lovely Matt Cardle and specifically his emotional tears in last night's X Factor.
This got me to thinking about a piece I read in the newspaper in the week

It stated that a recent study from Penn State University in the US suggests that  that tears are becoming more acceptable for men and less so for women.

The study, using a sample of 284 people, found that men were judged much more positively for crying than women. This, according to the study’s authors, was because men were seen as expressing honest emotion where women were seen as out of control.
This could be to do with our stereotypical view of men and women. And, says Professor Tom Lutz, of the University of California, Riverside, it is why male politicians, at least in the US, can allow themselves the occasional tear, whereas women cannot. A man is seen as strong and unemotional, so crying hints at depth. A woman politician has to portray herself as tough to succeed. So when a woman cries it reinforces stereotypes and tells us that her toughness was just a front and she has revealed herself to be weak underneath.
This is an interesting premise, and not one I actually believe in. I personally think the important factor in all this is HOW you cry rather than IF you cry.
Men cry in  a rather hidden and slightly shy way. It is disguised emotion that does not occur very often and I think that it is this rarity of occurrence that makes "male tears" so interesting.
  
In private I can cry at the drop of a hat