privileges

Jessica Chastain and Mindy Kaling on Crying Privilege

Photo: Noam Galai/Getty Images, Carlos Alvarez/Getty Images

Mindy Kaling interviewed Jessica Chastain for Interview magazine, where they spoke about an absolute pile of fascinating subjects, but mainly about being prominent women in media. On this subject, Chastain spoke about a crying double standard for powerful women:

When I was playing the character in Zero Dark Thirty, I had such empathy for this woman who was trained to be unemotional, who was in a field where she had to lock away most of who she was until she didn’t even know who she was anymore. Women in politics actually cannot show emotion. They’ve been trained. Obama can cry, but Hillary can’t because then all these commentators will say she’s weak. And we as women should be, like, “Actually, what’s so wonderful about us is that we do have compassion for other people, and we do have empathy and we feel things deeply.” We should be able to express that.

Tears are just little salty and genderless heaps of watery goop. Let them weep forth from everyone. Cry-sap for all! 

Jessica Chastain on Crying Privilege