The Crying Game

‘IT’S not the repeated sights of ululating women and red-eyed men screeching for blood that makes the Independent ask if it’s okay for grown men to cry – it’s Claudio Ranieri.

Gazza goes emotional

For those of you who don’t make it to the back pages, the Indy explains all.

‘The sight,’ it says, ‘of Chelsea manager Claudio Ranieri weeping after his team’s victory over Arsenal prompted one of the great questions of our age: ‘Should men dissolve into tears?’

Given that such a poser is viewed as one of the ‘great’ questions of this or any other epoch is worth crying over in itself.

And to compound matters, the formerly sensible paper employs six panellists to nod their heads and tell us what they think about all things teary.

For anyone who cares about this big question, Terence Blacker (author) is embarrassed at men crying; Virginia Ironside (agony aunt) thinks the ‘stiff upper lip is long gone’; Susie Orbach (psychotherapist) says we don’t say men cry, rather they’ve ‘gone emotional’; and yet another psychotherapist, this one’s called Phillip Hodson, concludes that ‘men do cry’.

Hodson certainly earns his crust. Men do indeed cry – we’ve seen it. Paul Gascoigne’s done it. Andre Agassi’s done it. Chris Patten’s done it.

And every Australian male who’s ever shown their face on TV has done it.

But if they are not evidence enough that men do cry, then the Indy’s readership can turn to the Telegraph’s front page and learn that even Iraqi men do it, most often when a US missile has just slammed into a mosque in Fallujah.

Only there, the crying is mixed with another cry – for vengeance, bloodshed and all-out war…’

Posted: 8th, April 2004 | In: Broadsheets Comment | TrackBack | Permalink