From the Times:
WHEN women first joined the executive ranks of corporate America a generation ago, they donned sober slacks and button-down shirts. They carried standard-issue briefcases and adopted their male colleagues’ stoicism.
More than two decades later, women have stopped trying to behave like men, trading in drab briefcases for handbags and embracing men’s wear only if it is tailored to their curves. Yet there is one taboo from the earlier, prefeminist workplace that endures: women are not allowed to cry at the office. It is a potentially career-marring mistake that continues to be seen as a sign of weakness or irrationality, no less by women themselves than by men.
I’m a big ol’ cry baby. I wail when I’m tired, angry, frustrated, or disappointed. I also blubber at the end of sappy kiddy videoes. Ian has a sign language video that gets me every time. It really doesn’t take much to push me into sob city, so I was very distressed to learn that I would be considered a pansy in the office.
It’s time for society to stop discriminating against lacrimal effusions. Tears don’t make you a sissy. It can be a nice release before doing all the manly stuff that a job may require. It’s quite possible to have a good cry and then down size your workforce by a 1,000 people. Cry first and then reject another insurance claim. Cry. Then send some more troops off to war.
Apt. 11d 
My lady friend tends to cry from time to time, and I thought I’d become used to it. Then, yesterday after an operation she started to cry from pain. No wailing, mind you, just tears running down her face. I thought my heart had been wrenched off its hinges. But, naturally, I didn’t cry myself….
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I’m a total crier. Any strong emotion–anger, sadness–makes me cry. Feels pretty good afterwards though.
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I cry too — at big stuff, little stuff, and yes, even at holiday TV comercials! That’s just the way it goes. And society should get over it. Crying must be healthier than some other emotions — let’s just start with anger, shall we?
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I just saw a picture of a baby on TV, the mother holding it up proudly, and it made me cry. I’m definitely hormonal right now, but I won’t pretend this easy-to-cry stuff isn’t typical for me.
I was watching Martha Stewart’s Apprentice show a few weeks ago and one of the team members said to Martha, “I’m so embarrassed for our team, I want to cry”. Martha said, “Oh my dear, if you cry, you are out of here. There is no crying in business.” It reminded me of “there’s no crying in baseball”.
Good or bad opinions of her aside, I’m sure Martha has had to become pretty tough in business to get where she is today. She is more successful than ever.
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I think it depends on the situation. If you were to cry while being fired then its acceptable.
Emotions are in essence expressions of feelings and if we all worked with friends and had to deal with clients that are friends then it would be ok to cry. But in business we have to deal with alot of people you don’t like and are not friendly with becasue you need to get your pay check and you need to live.
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Funny thing is, you read a lot of epic poetry and you can’t make it three pages without some manly man, who cuts the heads off of his enemies before chewing rocks, weeping his eyes out over something or other. Deaths, betrayals, good food, etc. When exactly did the world decide that crying must never happen in the public world?
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I think this taboo has little to do with crying, and everything to do with the reaction to crying. Most men don’t know what to do when a woman cries at work. Men hate not knowing what to do. So, as a means of self-protection, men create a taboo against crying.
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I agree with Jeff. I am a crier (I will not say a cry-baby because that is infantilising what I consider to be a valid adult physiological reflex to emotion). I recently had a horrible boss who frustrated me no end by his inability to communicate — and I was often on the point of tears. In one meeting with him I was unable to hold in my frustration, and started to cry as I spoke. His reaction was to call his PA into the office as a witness to my behaviour, with the excuse that he was protecting himself against a possible claim of sexual harassment!
Now, if he made me cry without sexually harassing me (and there really was no harassment, just stupidity), why did he see my tears as such a big “sexual” threat?
Because my tears were something that (to him) marked me as a “woman” and emotionally unstable, and they also prevented him from taking my real concerns — anger and frustration at his inability to communicate — seriously.
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hobbled over here from feminist carnival…
i wrote about this, too, and i had a woman comment that it’s *always* inappropriate to cry because it’s unprofessional.
but crying is a normal human reaction to…anything: stress, fear, joy, anger, frustration. who hasn’t felt all that in an office during one week??
it’s significant that crying gets labeled ‘girly’ and unprofessional while other behavior (more ‘masculine’ behavior) like screaming, yelling, throwing shit, pounding tables, publicly humiliating coworkers – that’s not unprofessional at all. hmm.
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It is really interesting how so many reactions that as females we are socialised to have (or to find acceptable in childhood) are branded “unprofessional” in the work environment.
I absolutely agree with Jeff – I think that a substantial amount of the crying taboo is based on the fact that men hate the impact that this has on them. It is the same as the rationals that I have heard for why women shouldn’t be on the front line, or in the main hall of the Mosque – they will distract the men.
The office environment is still built around the assumption that women (and all their ‘female’ qualities) are at home. Working hours are structured around the idea that the house, food preparation and children are being taken care of by ‘the wife’. Appropriate behaviours are those that are associated with masculinity. etc.
The more the change, the more they stay the same…
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You peruse a ton of saga poetry and you could not venture to make it a few pages without some masculine man, who cuts the takes off of his adversaries before biting shakes, weeping his eyes out over something mysterious.
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