Weep Me a River: Women Cry for 16 Months of their Lives!

By Sherrie Gulmahamad on September 17th, 2009

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One of the greatest moments in movie crying history belongs to Holly Hunter in Broadcast News.  Hunter plays Jane Craig, an ambitious and intelligent TV news producer, who like all great modern women, struggles to juggle her personal needs and desires with a successful career. And to relieve the pressure of her stressful lifestyle, Craig cries on cue, and for a specific amount of time, as deeply and soulfully and wretchedly as she needs to cry…and then she sits up, straightens herself up, and gets back to work.  Amazing. Shouldn’t we all do that?

It turns out that empassioned weeping is part of our lives as women from beginning to end! TheBabyWebsite.com recently conducted a poll to find out why women cry and how often do they cry.  And the answer is: we cry for 16 months of our lives.  We start out crying about hunger and later in life, cry in sappy films, cry about sour relationships, and cry when we lose a loved one.

Of course when I initially tweeted this link, I got an ocean of @ replies that were mostly jokes from male friends, some of which misread the stat as “Women cry for 16 YEARS of their lives” – at which they still remained “unsurprised” by this news.  But joke all you want, menfolk.  There’s been a multitude of studies that prove that (most of the time, for the most part) crying is therapeutic. It’s even been proven in the laboratory that the chemical make up of “emotional” tears vs your regular tears (say, from chopping an onion or an accidental poke in the eye) is different, and may release stressful chemicals that have built up in the body.

So go on, have a good cry.  Cry into your pillow and then flip it over to hide the evidence. Go see Up! and have yourself a sniffle.  Take a deep breath afterwards, dry those eyes, and go back to being fabulous, a la Holly Hunter.

Bonus!

Best Classic Devastating Movies For Sniffling Times
Imitation of Life (1959)
The End of the Affair (1955)
An Affair to Remember (1957)
They Shoot Horses, Don’t They (1969)
Dark Victory (1939)
Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1969)
To Sir with Love (1967)