Be a man ... and cry a little?

Remember that old Pepsi ad featuring MC Hammer?  I still remember that commercial not because of any fondness of Pepsi over Coke, but because of "feelings" that the macho rapper starts to croon.  I thought that the ad did young boys a huge disservice by suggesting it was not hip to sing about, to talk about, feelings.

I was raised with phrases like "don't cry like a girl"--like almost all kids were back in those days in the old country.  Anger I could display. Fight I could--because boys will be boys.  But, crying was unmanly. I see that attitude even now, even in the adopted country.

We seem to forget that feelings bring people together.  Women cultivate their sisterhood through talking about their feelings, whether it is about their husbands or mothers or colleagues or kids or ... it is a long list of people about whom we have feelings and women seem to unreservedly talk about them.  Men, on the other hand, talk about sports and politics and the weather and everything else that is not about one's own feelings. 

All these despite plenty of men singing about feelings.  Like even that "feelings" song that MC Hammer sings because he drank the "wrong" soda.

Feelings, nothing more than feelings,
Trying to forget my feelings of love.
Teardrops rolling down on my face,
Trying to forget my feelings of love.

It is also the case that men who sang about feelings were immensely popular with women, from Frank Sinatra to Marvin Gaye to ... recall Rebecca's weak spot in Cheers?

Yet, "vulnerable emotions are coded as not masculine."  But, men's emotions are not merely about women.  It is a world of emotions.  The inability to share emotions means men have difficulty with friendships too, unlike women and their sisterhood.

Normalize it. Normalize the desire. Normalize the fact that all humans need these relationships to thrive. Charles Darwin said that our social abilities and skills is the reason why we've thrived as a species. I mean, we've known this for over a century - that these relationships are critical to our mental health - and we need to stop having a culture that says, somehow, you know, a certain gender doesn't need them and only another gender and sexuality needs them.
It's human to want friends - close, deep ocean friends, friends you love with an exclamation point, friends who know your deepest weirdness and your favorite emoji.

It is strange, bizarre, and tragic that this is talked about even in 2019!  Am not at all surprised that of the students who come to my office, only female students ever are honest with their emotions and seek my assistance.  With a couple of male students, I have even mildly attempted to convey to them to sort out their issues, but ...

Some day, we will get past these false gender norms and become healthy.