Someone, maybe your father or your uncle, told you men don’t cry.
You kept hearing it. And you heard “big boys don’t cry.” The messages were clear: if you cry, you’re not a big boy. If you cry, you’re not a man.
So, you learned to stifle the urge to let your emotions loose. You learned to suck it up, hold it in. Over time, you got so good at it that it was no longer hard. You learned you could, with practice, switch off the emotions that put you in risky territory, a place in which a tear might fall. And you learned other men did the same.
Except those who didn’t. Or couldn’t. Or wouldn’t. They were the ones everyone made fun of. They were the ones called crybabies at recess. Later, they would be the ones bullied by the especially macho types. And then, even later, they would be the ones whose emotions caused discomfort in a room full of men–and even women–when they just couldn’t hold back their tears when a close relative or a pet died.
Since at least the late 1970s, though, society has been on the path of acknowledging the harm caused by teaching boys to suppress their emotions. Surely the message has gotten through, right?
You tell me.
This piece is an experiment. I wrote it after reading something about how the application of techniques used in ad copy writing can be used effectively to capture a reader’s interest. Nothing to see here, people, just flexing my fingers.
