Posted on: January 26, 2007
The Crying Game
Everyone needs to cry like a little kid from time to time, but location is key. Head to the annals of pop music to find out the best spot to shed a tear
By Darcel Rockett
CTW Features
It’s your party. Really, you can cry if you want to.
Reasons for welling up are as varied and numerous as the faces they fall from. We cry to get our way, we cry when we’re sad, hurt or depressed, and we shed a tear or two to relieve stress.
“The act of crying is very complex, and is affected by psychosocial factors (e.g., your personality, your gender), biological factors (e.g., hormone levels), and situational factors (e.g., norms concerning crying in that situation, the presence of others),” says Dr. Janice Kelly, professor of psychological sciences at Purdue University in Lafayette, Ind.
With so many factors, how is a person to know when and where it’s safe or OK to cry without making others feel awkward or uncomfortable? Hopefully taking a cue from the lexicon of pop music will clear it up for you, so you won’t be “All Cried Out” or “Lost in Emotion,” as ‘80s group Lisa Lisa and Cult Jam says.
Bed
A prime location: In fact, it could be the best location in crying real estate. As the Sha Na Na’s say in “Tears on My Pillow,” when one is tempting fate with a pain in their heart, you need as much support as you can find – Sealy Posturpedics were invented for a reason.
Movies/Television/Commercials
Cha-Ching! Jackpot. The darkened setting serves as a buffer for you to bawl without attention, as long as you’re not the town crier with your crying. Any movie has the possibility to touch a chord or heartstring that could open the floodgates. And even though Fankie Vallie says, “Big Girls Don’t Cry,” they do. And it’s OK to do so, cause everything’s going to be all right.
Phone
Perhaps the most logical venue for tears, as someone can call to say, “I love you,” Stevie Wonder-style, or go 180 degrees the opposite direction: not accepting your apology for making a mistake. (Reference: Justin Timberlake’s “Cry Me a River.”) As long as you can talk through the tears and avoid crying on your cell phone in the middle of the supermarket, it’s a safe outlet.
Work
All bets are off at the office. Work is like the time-share of crying locations. No one really wants to go there. Crying at work is taboo, as negative connotations usually come with it – weak, emotional, sensitive. In this arena, use the mantra touted by The Cure, “Boys Don’t Cry.” Just refer to the title and lyrics as unisex.
Man Law
Being a man can make it all a little trickier. Your small window of opportunity to cry is summed up best by Smokey Robinson in “Tears of a Clown” – “When there’s no one around, smiling in the public eye, but in my lonely room I cry.”
“In our society, we do tend to socialize our boys and girls differently with respect to the appropriateness of emotional expression, including crying,” Kelly says. “We are much more apt to teach our boys that ‘big boys don’t cry,’ and therefore as adults, men tend to cry less than do women. It’s not that men feel any less sad, it’s just that men and women choose or are taught different forms of the expression of that underlying emotion.”
Now if we can only figure out why doves cry during Prince’s Super Bowl halftime show …
