Several years ago, Dr. William Frey met with a team of doctors, scientists, and hospital administrators about plans to “head up a new department,” as he put it. Frey, who is now the director of the Alzheimer’s Research Center at Regions Hospital in St. Paul, Minn., knew that the ambitious medical project required a lot of advance planning. “We’d scheduled this organizational meeting several weeks in advance and we each had agreed to do things to prepare for it,” he says. “I said I’d do X and Y, another physician said he’d do A, B, and C.” But when the group met, the second physician hadn’t done his homework. He tried to pass his unpreparedness off on a subordinate, and berated her in front of the entire committee even though she wasn’t to blame.
“He starts yelling at this woman administrator, saying how come you didn’t do this or that,” Frey recalls, “She was sitting at the table and she was wearing glasses, I remember. As he yelled at her, she didn’t say anything, but you could see these tears coming down her cheeks under her glasses.” As soon as the physician noticed the tears, he stopped. He apologized. He admitted the fault was his. Frey was fascinated. “Clearly these tears communicated something in that workplace situation very effectively,” he says.
Frey remembers the crying administrator so clearly because she was exhibiting something he’d spent years researching: why we cry. Although Frey is now known primarily for his Alzheimer’s work, his first high-profile research subject was the composition and purpose of human tears. Until the 1980s, when Frey published his findings on the topic—along with the 1985 book Crying: The Mystery of Tears, now out of print—scientists knew very little about our sobbing. If someone cried too much, too often, or in an inappropriate situation, he or she was just considered weak. This was a problem for many women who’d entered the workforce.
“When I started my first banking job [in 1977], I was explicitly told, don’t let them see you cry,” says Anne Kreamer, a former top media executive who is now the author of It’s Always Personal: Emotion in the New Workplace. “Countless women I knew were told this, from doctors doing their internships to other women in business. You cannot show this side of yourself. It’ll be considered a weakness.” Back then, Kreamer and her peers were pushing against a glass ceiling significantly lower and thicker than the one today. They tried to conform to the dominant male-oriented work culture that had already been created (case in point: that brief but unfortunate fascination with shoulder pads), but sometimes they just couldn’t help it. They cried.
According to Frey’s research, adult women cry four times as often as men. But it’s not because we’re wimps or because we more clearly grasp the fragility of the human condition. (Or at least, I don’t.) The answer, as with everything, has to do with science.
Men’s and women’s tear ducts are anatomically different. Women also have higher levels of the hormone prolactin, which promotes lactation and has been associated with an increased tendency to cry. Prolactin levels also rise when a woman is menstruating, pregnant, or has recently given birth. Great.
Similarly, testosterone—of which men have more—has been associated with a decreased tendency to tear up. Different people have different prolactin and testosterone levels, which may partly explain why some people are self-described criers, why others can watch Old Yeller tear-free, and why my roommate cried at work last week over Buzzfeed’s “21 Pictures That Will Restore Your Faith In Humanity” list.
“Those lists always get me, I have to keep walking away from my desk so I calm down,” my roommate told me. She agreed to be interviewed for this article but refused to let me print her full name in case someone Googles her and learns how sappy she is. So I’ll just call her by her nickname: Ol’ Weepy-Face. Just kidding, it’s Mazz.
Mazz works in the fashion industry in Manhattan and has cried so many times at work that she’s lost count. “It happens at least once a week,” she admits. Usually her tears are related to something she’s watched or read on the Internet, although breakups and personal drama have been past instigators as well. “I cry when I’m sad and I cry when I’m too happy—basically any emotional extreme and I’ll cry,” she explains. Sometimes she seeks privacy in the bathroom. Sometimes she’ll stay at her desk and hope no one notices. “Yeah, I silently weep to myself in the middle of the office,” she says. “No big deal.”
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