Woman to woman: being moved

Count us in for whatever party she’s headed to…

In our Woman to Woman feature, two women share their take on a particular topic. This month it’s being emotional — something women through the ages have been told they’re being (and usually too much or too often). Here, Katy Wise Greer and Erin Ellison talk about being moved (or not) by the world around them.

So moving!

Erin Ellison

I am from the midwest, and what you need to know about my people is that our song is kindness. We genuinely (for the most part) want to be sure you are ok. Mostly because you could be what stands between us and freezing to death next winter. 

When I was at a recent event in Cleveland, I met a woman from Washington, DC. She was disarmed by all the people making eye contact with her on the street — “it really threw me. That just doesn’t happen in DC.” And that is true: midwesterners meet you with their eyes first. Need directions or help with a flat? Find someone who will also ask “‘Jeet?” when they want to know if you’re hungry. They’ll help you out. 

What you need to know about me is that these eyes will often by on the verge of welling up. Super emotional over here. (hi!)

I get choked up when someone wins a gold medal at the Olympics and takes their victory lap with everyone in the crowd cheering. I got sad when I read a meme about our non-dominant hand being pretty much useless — can’t even hold a pencil, poor thing. Finding Your Roots is so beautiful. And Publix ads wreck me. Yep, southern women do not have the corner on the tears market.

My external barometer for other people’s emotions is just set a notch or two too high. 

I am no longer allowed to go to live theater because I am destroyed by the emotional rawness of it for days. Days. Same with the symphony — or an old ad from Folgers at the holidays. They need a warning label for people like me. I even see movies alone because there’s a better than average chance I’ll cry in it — Lego movie was rough y’all — and not in a chill way. 

I ghosted Maybelline: Mascara is something I haven’t bought in years. And why bother with eyeliner when you’re only going to wipe it off with a tissue or wipe it away with the back of your hand? That’s just practicality, folks.

Unmoved.

Katy Wise Greer

“I’m so sorry for your loss,” I said as I dug my nails deeper into the heel of my palm.

“How did you know Brad?” Her face was mottled, splotched with dried tears and flakes of mascara. Leave it to Southern women to pack on the Great Lash even on the day of a funeral, I thought. 

I wasn’t at all worried about my own mascara. 

“We, uh…we worked together. I actually knew him pretty well. He was such a great guy…” I fumbled. CRY NOW, my brain willed my eyes. JUST TEAR UP. Nothing. She smiled meekly, and with a vague thank-you moved on to someone who could show some appropriate sympathy for her dead husband. 

The truth is I really was sorry. My heart broke for this woman. I’d known Brad for several years, working alongside him closely at times. A particularly fit hiker in his early fifties, his sudden death by way of a heart attack came as a total shock to those who knew him. Brad was witty, jovial, loud, and intensely interested in getting to know me as a person and not simply his marketing partner – a bright spot in an otherwise dismal point in my career. If I were going to earnestly cry at the funeral of anyone I worked with, it would have been Brad’s. 

It can be tricky, living as an unemotional woman (or, as my therapist once explained it, “a chick with a dude’s brain”). There’s a certain presupposition our wider society has of women who hail from the South: we’re expected to be warm, nurturing, kindhearted, and empathetic. People want us to be moved externally, at least during moving moments. At a minimum, we should be able to persuasively fake it, to offer up some credible tenderness amid someone else’s, or even our own, misery. 

Why I couldn’t conjure up some convincing emotion that day of all days was beyond me – what with all my years of experience – but there I stood, dry-eyed, with a palm full of half-moon indentations and a lifetime of good intentions. 

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So, where do you fall on this emotional spectrum? Do you cry over puppies like Erin or blink back at people trying to conjure up the physical manifestation of what your feeling? Is one better — or more feminine? Comment below and share your thoughts.