Men are often intrigued by the secrets of the ladies’ powder room. What are they getting up to in there, that is so unspeakable, and takes so long? The answer is, I’m afraid, not very titillating, or even vaguely lesbian, but rather sad. That is where your boss, colleague or employee goes to cry.
In every one of my workplaces, from newspapers to the House of Commons, I’ve experienced the awkwardness of stumbling upon an acquaintance, sobbing, in the cubicles. Once, when covering a difficult court case, I wandered into the loos at lunchtime to find the lead witness, a high-powered businesswoman, mascara streaming down her cheeks. Forbidden to talk while under oath, we passed some tissues silently across the washbasin before she gave another bravura performance that afternoon. Mostly we react by averting our eyes, in sympathetic shame. What we do not do is tell our male workmates.
This is because for a woman to cry at work is seen as feeble and irrational — the behaviour of a child who cannot cope. Big girls don’t cry — and when the tears spill out in open view it can be a career-breaking failure. Women as well as men tend to go along with this consensus. But I believe that crying in the office is one of feminism’s last stands.
I am not arguing for rivers of tears to irrigate Britain’s workplaces — I find the spectacle just as embarrassing as the next man. But I do think that it is time the emotional outpouring should be judged equally with its male equivalent: losing one’s temper.
Take a recent episode of the US version of The Apprentice TV show. A female contestant told Martha Stewart, the show’s millionaire host, that she felt like crying after losing a task. Ms Stewart shot back: “Cry and you are out of here. Women in business don’t cry.” If the contestant had punched the wall or bawled out team mates, I have no doubt Ms Stewart would have approved. Or consider another new American hit drama series, Commander in Chief, which imagines the life of the first female US president. The big question was: should the world’s most powerful leader be allowed to weep? When asked, the lead actress, Geena Davis, was indignant: “I did not cry in my pilot — no!” That was her point of honour, but no one thought to ask if the president should be allowed to lose his or her rag — a state more dangerous and volatile than tears.
It has got to the stage where crying is so taboo for women in power that they have to bite their lips, while watching their male colleagues blub to good effect. The Holly Hunter character in the film Broadcast News is often desperate to be alone so that she can relieve the stress of her TV executive job with a private sob. Meanwhile, one of her male employees gains kudos for breaking down on screen.
We all remember the moment when Baroness Thatcher was evicted from Downing Street, unable to contain the bitterness of the moment in her red-rimmed eyes (she revealed in her autobiography that moments before exiting No 10 she had been so wracked with tears that a female employee had wiped the make-up from her cheeks.)
Look everyone, we crowed, the Iron Lady has sprung a leak! But the Australian Prime Minister Bob Hawke wept publicly three times while leader, without hurting his macho image. Bill Clinton was a master of the well-timed well-up, and both President Bushes frequently turn on the waterworks. This option is not available to women in office.
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This is the more surprising, given how often we are told that women should no longer ape men to get ahead, but accept our differences. Crying is one way in which women are different, through a mysterious combination of nature and nurture. One study showed that women cried an average of 5.3 times a month compared with 1.4 for men, and when they did they cried more.
But the same gender disparity is true for fits of rage, simply an alternative way of losing emotional control. Men lash out more than women, it is just that since they invented the modern workplace, anger is OK, crying is not. The woman who cries is pitied for being weak, the man who loses his temper is often admired for making those around him seem weak, and himself the more passionate and committed to his job. Yet if crying is seen as silly and childish, isn’t a temper tantrum, if anything, more so? Big Girls should stop crying when Big Boys stop yelling.
Cameron's poppy appeal palls a little
David Cameron has won. I do not mean the Conservative leadership contest, but a strange little ritual that politicians play about this time every year (although it gets earlier and earlier). On Tuesday afternoon he appeared in the House of Commons debate on education wearing a Remembrance Day poppy in his lapel.
Nothing extraordinary about that, you might think, except that he was the only one on the Tory front bench to do so. In fact, it appeared he was the only politician in the whole chamber to wear the poppy. I make no judgment on this — Remembrance Day was two and a half weeks off at the time, but the ridiculous spectacle is to follow. Watch as Cameron’s rival, David Davis, rushes to pin his on so as not to seem the less respectful, and then their Labour opponents, and within days few politicians will dare be seen without one.
All in a good cause, but it seems a shame that this personal gesture has been overcome by the demands of political PR.
Birth of the blues
Yesterday the National Institute for Clinical Excellence announced that the uptake of birth-control injections and implants is too low, mainly because women are not aware of them.
I disagree — among my friends it is what women know of how they are used that makes them hesitate. One who had the implants was teased for choosing a method of birth-control some of whose users were the mentally incapacitated or criminal. Judges in California and Texas have made implants a probation condition for women guilty of child abuse. Other states have tried (and failed) to pass laws making implants compulsory for women convicted of certain crimes, or wanting public aid.
Although happy with her implants, my friend did confess to an an image problem compared with the Sixties chic of the pill. “It’s not giving off the aspirational signals I’d like,” she said.
