Toys Don't Cry

Men, by stereotype, are tough aren’t they? Yeah, they go round shouting and fighting, they’re derogatory towards women, boast about how they fucked that broad last night and she loved it (even if it never happened). This is the stereotypical man, he loves beer, football, tits and most of all being a hard bastard.
It would be wrong to say that all men are like this because after all I’m writing, I’m not outside fighting for the honour of a football team I have needlessly affiliated myself with and therefore become so emotionally attached that match results dictate my moods and feelings, no, I am writing, which in the world of men is considered sissy and gay (unless it’s about football or tits).
Nevertheless every man gets stuck with this tag and when it comes to movies the juxtaposition of this stereotype with “tearjerkers” is apparently hilarious. A woman can watch a sad or emotionally moving film and cry and that’s not a problem because she’s a woman and that’s expected. When a man cries in a film it’s an opportunity to point and laugh at him because of the stereotypical identity that’s been given to him.
This is a stigma that as a fairly sensitive and probably quite sissy man I despise. When will a man be able to cry at a cinema and it not be made into a big deal? When will a man watch a film with his wife and not have to hold the tears back for fear of embarrassment? It’s a moving film and he’s got to let it all out for fuck’s sake! Andy and Red are reunited on the beach and through fear of humiliation we cannot fully embrace this highly emotional homoerotic moment. The Cure famously told us that boys don’t cry, but it’s only because they would get laughed at.


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If only men cried more we wouldn’t have wars. When we’re sad instead of letting it all come out we bottle it up because of fear, and like Yoda said fear turns to anger and eventually the dark side, and we end up with a war all because some bastard couldn’t cry. You might think well hang on you’re exaggerating this but fuck you I’m not, I just watched Toy Story 3 and I cried and I’m fucking ashamed of myself. A film that has become famous for the volume of tears produced from men, not women or children, MEN. When I’m asked if I’ve seen Toy Story 3 in the future and I say yes, I will be asked did you cry? DID YOU CRY? DID YOU CRY? I’m a terrible liar, I will have to say yes, and they will laugh at me, ha ha, ha ha, HA HA HA, because a man crying is something to be laughed at.
It’s not my fault, Toy Story 3 was supposed to make you cry. It was relatable to just about every type of person, it makes you think about the loss of your youth and innocence, of being rejected, of lost friendships and your inevitable loneliness, your own endless futility, becoming old and useless, and if you are old and useless, how your children will abandon you if they haven‘t already. Every way you look at this film it addresses a fear, and what catches a tear in your eye is it telling you that everything is going to be fine.
All of this doesn’t matter, it’s primarily a kids movie and you shouldn’t cry, and if you do you’ll get laughed at, even by men who also cried. What scares me is that Hollywood has noted how effective Toy Story 3 was, how making men cry makes a hit and we have several hundred more tear inducing films to come in which everyone laughs at us. I’d like to say that I’m comfortable crying but in truth I’m not, it’s embarrassing but there’s no way to stop it, I can’t toughen up, men have tried to and failed. They started going to football matches but they just ended up crying there.