Don't cry for me, New Hampshire

I've no doubt that Hillary Clinton has it harder because she's a woman. Act too commanding, and you're a bossy shrew; stay low-key and you're weak. But on the crying thing, I have my doubts that she's really getting special treatment.

There are, to be sure, are different rules about crying for men and women. I've had female colleagues cry on my shoulders about problems with their boss, which didn't strike me as particularly odd, even though a male colleague who did the same thing would come across as more than passing strange. And perhaps leadership should not be assigned, by default, the "male" style of crying. But it is; and though it is true that male politicians, including Senator Clinton's husband, have cried, they have done so in circumstances where we recognize that men, and leaders can and even should cry.

Hillary didn't cry because she was moved by the pathos of the lives lost in the brutal New Hampshire winter. She cried because she's tired and campaigning is emotionally as well as physically exhausting, and dare I say it, because women tend to find public rejection a lot harder to take than men do. For all her talk of experience, this is only the third campaign where voters were answering the question "Do you like Hillary Clinton?", and it's the first time the answer has been "No, not really." I'm sure I'd cry like a baby. But we rather expect the president of the United States to be able to endure an exhausting travel schedule, constant criticism, and an endless loop of the same banal speech without bursting into tears.

If John Edwards had cried in Iowa, would he be getting a pass for displaying his sensitive side? Don't be daft; he'd be labeled a big fat crybaby who couldn't stand losing. But I have a hard time picturing him weeping on camera. Hillary's problem in this case isn't that she's being held to a different, higher standard than men. It's that she's being held to the exact same standard, but she hasn't been trained from birth to live up to it.