Alright, let’s dig into this stereotype that men don’t show their emotions as much as women. True? False. Men do. Men do in lots of ways. Just not always smart, rational, or legal ways (but why only condemn men for that, right?) One of the ways that men have been, in certain cases, brought up to believe is unacceptable is crying. My grandfather and my father both were instilled with the belief that crying doesn’t solve anything, therefore it serves no purpose. Now, that’s bullsh*t but unfortunately there is still some guys out there who have that kind of mentality. They can whine and yell and throw tantrums and complain and become utter stone faces under the sun but crying makes them look weak. Well, let me tell you all something, crying doesn’t make you weak and no matter how hard guys might try, there are certain times when all you can do is cry, cry, cry…

initiating the gallery...

Alright, so I ended on a slightly more whimsical note. As always take the list as seriously as you choose to. But there’s no denying the fact that men do cry and men, I feel, in general should be more open to expressing their emotions through tears. It’s often a tremendous release to a lot of bottled up and overwhelming stress that we’ve got weighing us down. A healthy cry, amen to that. Now, when have you seen your BFs or BFFs start up their waterworks? What’d I miss on the list? Fire away down below!

That’s all the vampire information you need to know.

Rupert Dude

Some people cry with such ease. I am not one of those people. It takes a lot to make my eyes water (unless I’m on my period, then I tend to get emotional over the tiniest things). However, there are some things that can make even the coldest person cry. Even if your heart is made of stone, these five things are always going to be tearjerkers.

1. That scene in Titanic when the mom is reading to her kids as the boat sinks

She KNOWS the boat is sinking and that her family most likely won’t make it out alive, so she reads her kids to sleep so they can die in peace. OMG I’m about to cry right now.

2. Sad Animals

When those Sarah McLachlan commercials come on and I start seeing blind cats and dogs with no teeth, I turn into a mess and contemplate adopting every single one of those animals.

3. A Pregnancy Scare

These are especially bad when you’re on birth control and you’re period usually comes the day after your last pill, and for some reason it doesn’t come one month. You suddenly start thinking “Of course I would be the one person out of 100 that gets pregnant.” Then you start crying because you’re only 20 years old and you don’t want to graduate with a baby bump.

4. Finally realizing how many student loans you took out

I recently looked at how much I’m going to have to pay back after college, and I sobbed. I’m a journalism major, okay? I’m not going to be a doctor or anything, so I’ll be paying back my loans until I die.

5. This video

Get out a box of Kleenex.

Get tired of watching the kinds of unrealistic reality TV shows out there? Law and Order, Criminal Minds and NCIS just not doing the job for you?

A&E runs a little show called Intervention. Ever heard of it? If not, let me tell you, it’s as real as it gets; as ugly as it gets; as tear jerking as it gets.

At the closing of the show, the addict is confronted but his/her family in a final attempt to bring attention to the issues and the addiction and discuss how it is affecting each individual’s life. Cue the tears both on the set and on your couch. It’s heart wrenching to watch someone’s struggle smack them in the face. I always cry.

But, uh, well… not this time.

While you might call me insensitive, watch this clip and then consult your own moral compass.

[Everyone’s got a vice, a bad habit, something they know they need to change. Unfortunately, everyone also has a million excuses why they just can’t do it. Not anymore. Every month we will be following a different CollegeCandy writer as she takes on a personal challenge. Last month, Khalea gave up fried food. This month, Michelle is going to come face to face with stress eating. Can she stop the emotional ice cream binges? We'll find out....]

When I started writing this week’s post, I really worried about it sounding like a “Dear Diary…” kind of deal. Stress eating, and the reasons behind it, are so personal, for every single individual. The reasons I stress eat can be totally opposite from the reasons my best friend stress eats or the reasons my boyfriend stress eats. It’s so dependent on life circumstances, and personality, and, when it comes down to it, the way each and every one of us thinks. Which, I hope we all agree on this, is different for everybody. Thought is just not homogenous across humanity. Obviously, I’m not any kind of professional, and everything I write here is based around me and how I think these things through… but I hope all my fellow stress eaters will be able to get a little insight into their own lives from what I’m experiencing.

How’s it going?

The past few days haven’t been easy. I’ve found myself standing in my kitchen holding a bag of tortilla chips and teetering on the edge of, I am going to eat all of these. I’ve been able to (mostly) talk myself down from these moments by addressing how I really feel… but each and every time, I get this itchy, uncomfortable feeling about it. Feeling emotions, really feeling them, makes us all uncomfortable to some extent. Feeling sad, being angry, experiencing grief… they aren’t good feelings and we don’t like it. So if we can avoid it, why not?

I should probably confess something right now: I’m a cry-er. I cry a lot. Probably at least 40% of the time. I cry when I’m angry, when I’m hurt, when I’m frustrated, when I feel ignored, when someone is mean, when I’m annoyed, when I’m stressed… pretty much if it doesn’t make me happy, I cry about it. And sometimes I even cry when I’m happy. I’m a cry-er. It’s what I do.

And I’m an ugly cry-er, guys. Really. It makes my face muscles tense and hurt. My head starts to pound. My nose runs and I talk like I have an extremely bad cold. Crying sucks, but I do it all the time.

Sometimes, when I’m right on the edge of tears, I eat instead. Because I hate crying, even though I do it all the time. But there is another side to my crying habit. Sometimes when I cry, I don’t eat. Sometimes, when I really let myself feel things, when I cry for a few hours like my body wants to, I don’t eat. I’ll feel hungry. But I’ll be so sad, and my head and face will hurt from crying so much, that I don’t have the energy to eat. So what’s better: compulsively eating so I don’t feel the emotion… or feeling the emotion and being so drained from it that I don’t eat?

Girls, this stress eating thing is getting complicated.

So… what’s working?

Cardio recently has not been doing it for me when it comes to exercising the stress away. I still feel good when I get off the treadmill or the elliptical machine, but at the same time, twenty minutes later, I still have the feeling of missing my boyfriend or stressing about the fact that there are, literally, no young professional job opportunities in my area (for people with my training and degree). So what has been working? Circuit training. Strangely enough, doing a series of crunches, leg lifts, high knees and long jumps clears my brain in a way that cardio used to, and afterward, the burn in my muscles is almost cathartic. Plus, if I keep this up, I’ll have some amazing abs. So if you’re finding cardio a little humdrum, give yourself a break and try some circuit training.

Finding a new hobby has also helped me a lot. When I don’t have anything to do (and, frankly, without a job and with my boyfriend in a different state, my options for things to do are pretty limited), I tend to obsess over little things, get stressed, and then eat. I promised my boyfriend that I’d find “little projects” for myself every single day. This week, I received a Canon Rebel T2i in the mail… and haven’t been able to put it down. When my part-time writing work gets done by 2pm, I now have something to do: I go for a walk with my camera and my dog; I visit my favorite spots around my hometown; or I go for a long drive, just me and my camera. Having a hobby distracts me and lightens my mood, especially when I’m having a bad day. I’m not saying you should drop $1,000 on a new camera or any kind of new hobby… but picking up scrapbooking, sewing or sketching is a great way to fill up the times where you would obsess over the little anxieties and stress eat.

Final Thoughts

This challenge has given me a lot to think about. Whenever I’ve been stressed lately, and found myself holding a jar of Nutella or some other tasty snack when I’m not really hungry, I’ve made a few notes in my journal and then calmly talked myself out of making a chocolate chip cookie sandwich with Nutella. All of these notes have essentially added up to the question I started this article with: what is it about feeling emotions that I hate?

Is it that I’m a cry-er? And an ugly crier at that? Because I give myself headaches from crying? Or is it because I don’t want to address what I really, really feel? As an example: when I’m frustrated with my boyfriend for not texting me back, what am I really thinking? Does he not love me? Is he with another girl? Is he ignoring me? It’s all based in insecurity, which fuels my stress, which fuels my stress eating, which fuels my insecurity. So really, when I stress eat to not feel emotion, what I’m really avoiding is addressing the underlying issue: that I’m insecure.

It can be a never-ending cycle, girls. But it’s time with break it. When I think about it, my stress eating always goes back to my little list of insecurities: the things that I’m unsure of regarding my body, my personality, my entire life. My insecurity over my not-so-flat stomach, my insecurity over the job market, my insecurity over the fact that maybe I’m not a likeable person… all of these things add up to anxiety that I pretend is about other things. But it’s not. It’s time to address the insecurity we all feel, so we can break the cycle of stress eating.

What is about dressing rooms?

I remember once in high school I spent a long day shopping with my mom. With no real agenda, we wandered from store to store just to pass time on an uneventful sunny Saturday afternoon. I spotted this killer mini dress from bcbg that had a long line of buttons up the back. I slid into the dressing room and tried it on.

Sometime in between taking the dress off the hanger and sliding it on, it happened. The waterworks started flowing. Likely a combination of the impossible to unbutton row of mini buttons, a pushy sales associate, and needing to go up a size, but it was that exact moment that the stress of college applications, a varsity sports team and just generally being a teenage girl decided to hit me. Lovely.

Here are six other situations that might leave even the strongest of us a little teary eyed:

1. You Gained the Freshman 5, 15, or 50:  No matter your size, extra weight gain from college ranks pretty high up there among the list of most upsetting things.

2. You Lost the Freshman 5, 15, or 50: And you’ve never looked hotter in that skintight dress. Tears. Of. Joy.

3. There just seem to not be any swimsuits in the world that work for you: My best friend always complains she can’t find swimsuits that fit her because she’s an XL on top and XS on the bottom (poor thing, right?). But swimsuits seem to be downright impossible. Who would have thought it’d be so hard to make such a tiny piece of fabric fit well.

4. You Gave Up Hope on Finding a Prom Dress: Ah yes, the wonders of being a high schooler, see above.  We spent days, weeks ( even months?) trying to find that perfect outfit to wear to Prom. You know, to impress the guy we convince ourselves we’re in love with, who we’ll stop talking to 1 month into college.

5. Hunger pains: You’ve officially put off going to the food court for far too long. Your stomach is empty and you haven’t even so much as sniffed an Annie’s pretzel all day.

6. General Mishaps: You inadvertently flash a hot guy. You break a zipper. Rip an expensive dress. Something embarrassing happens and it’s just the last thing you want to deal with.

What else will make any woman breakdown in a dressing room?

Back-to-school is right around the corner, and for many of you, the inevitable final year of college is looming.

Breathe in.
Breathe out.
It’s going to be OK.

Heading into your senior year well-prepared (and well-hydrated) makes all the difference, so here’s 9 things to keep in mind before you embark on the beginning of the end:

1. Check on Everything:
First things first, make a meeting with your academic advisor (yes, you have one) and make sure you have all the classes you need to graduate. If not – sign up for them immediately. Don’t wait to take your second required P.E. class until the last semester  — the classes could fill up and leave the only option available something that doesn’t fit with your academic schedule. (Or worse, it could be at 8am on a Friday.) Figure out if you have departmental requirements to fulfill. Find out when deadlines are and what the expectations are. Be aware of every step required towards you wearing your cap and gown and grabbing that diploma at the end of the year.

2. Senior Participation:
If your school has any special senior traditions or rights-of-passages, prepare for them. Do you need to decorate a special gown to wear for on-campus events? If so, get busy and decorate! Plan to participate in everything. Your hard work over the last three years has earned you this upperclassmen status, so bask in its glory!

3. Prep:
If you are planning to attend any kind of graduate school or professional program after college, set up a schedule for what needs to get done. If you are taking an exam such as the LSAT or GRE, and you haven’t started studying – figure out what you’re doing. If you’re ready to start applying to schools, ask for your letters of recommendation (while your professors still remember you/have time to write one!) and set a date to send your personal statement out. Make sure you have a schedule to stick to because once school gets going, things get crazy.

4. Leave the past behind:
If you had a huge fight with your best friend over the summer, either make-up or go your separate ways. Don’t hold onto grudges and drama from previous years – it won’t add anything to your senior year. This is your last hoorah so enjoy yourself, not the drama of college life around you.

5. Figure out what means the most to you:
For a minute, think about what makes you happy when it comes to your social life. What do you want more of during your senior year? More Thirsty Thursday parties? Plan ahead. Want to go climb that local mountain one last time with your boyfriend? Do it. Want to streak across campus? Just strip and do it. Don’t put it off – it’s the last year, so you won’t get another chance use “Whatever, I was in college” as an excuse. Create some kind of College Bucket List and hold yourself to it.

6. Expect a rollercoaster of emotions:
Senior year will be emotional, there’s no doubt about it. You will always have your ups and downs in college, but not having a safety net of returning to school next year really stirs up a lot of uncomfortable nervousness. Know that you will feel anxious and upset sometimes while you’re trying to figure things out, but don’t let it get to you too much. Cry about it if you must, but don’t dwell on it. And don’t hold it in! Be honest with your friends and family, and yourself. Everyone in your graduating class is in the same boat as you, so you won’t be alone.

7. Student Loans:
Get your crap together when it comes to student loans. If you have them, get real and realize you will have to pay them back – so keep that in mind when thinking about post-college plans. Find out how much you owe and what you need to do with your school’s financial aid department before the end of the year (you probably will need to go through an exit counseling session). Although you may want to freak out (and dive head first into a bowl of brownie batter), don’t necessarily let that get to you. Be smart. Understand your options and stay up on current student loan news. This will be something that could impact your entire life, so take it seriously.

8. Get Passionate:
Think about your passions. You may be an economics major, but if painting is what makes you happy – think about how you can carry that into your life beyond college. Explore all your interests. If you always wanted to take a yoga class, do it. Open yourself up because you definitely won’t be the same person at the end of your senior year as you were at the beginning.  This will make looking for jobs, internships, and planning for graduate school all the better. Even though you may be a journalism major, maybe you’re really into marketing – so applying to a marketing company instead of pursing a journalism graduate degree may be better for what you want in the long run. Step outside of every day plans and veer off your original course if necessary.

9. Take Advantage of All Options:
Just because your parents tell you that you must go to graduate school doesn’t mean it’s your only option. Maybe traveling for a year after college is what will suit you best, so consider it before you jump into another few years of school. Think about different places you want to live. Consider programs such as Teach for America or Ameri Corps. If college has taught you anything, it should be that you should try everything – so go into your senior year knowing the world is out there for you to figure it out, but it doesn’t have to all happen in a perfectly planned out way, so take advantage of what you can!

With all this in mind, you will surely start your year off on the right foot — leaving you lots of time to enjoy the remaining months of college to come!

Upon some recent discussion with my guy friends, I’ve come to realize that we girls may just be a little bit “too close.” I happen to be one of those people blessed with an intimate group of girlfriends, and therefore we talk about everything from the specific color name of our nail polish to the exact millisecond of how long our most recent sack session lasted.

However, upon stepping back a bit and really paying attention to what I was saying, I’ve begun to wonder if there is such thing as too much information sharing. Even if it never gets back to your guy, is it alright to share everything? Below are the key things that, looking back, I’m thinking should just remain between a lady and her man.

How Big He Is…Down There:  It’s something I never really thought about, probably because if anyone wants to know the size of my practically non-existent boobs, they can just look, but guys are ultra-sensitive to what they may or may not have. Well, mostly, what they don’t have. It is totally okay to talk about how big last night’s drunken hook up was, but if your boyfriend is less than well-endowed, you may want to keep that on the DL from your friends…at least until you break up.

The time he cried in front of you: I don’t think it’s any secret that girls cry in front of guys, but when it’s the other way around it probably should be. When your guy finally feels comfortable enough to shed some tears around you, don’t go telling all of your friends how sweet and sensitive it was to see him cry. Help him stay manly in the eyes of your friends and keep some things just between you.

The time he couldn’t get it up: Again, this is just one of those unfortunately embarrassing things that happens to guys when they are a) nervous or b) drunk. While you may want reassurance from your friends that you are gorgeous and that it’s not your fault that this happened, can you imagine how mortified your man already is that he can’t get excited for the naked girl next to him? Just think about how much worse it is when he walks in the room and everybody knows.

Each and every fight you get into: It’s understandable if you and your man have a huge blowout and you need to bitch to someone, but don’t criticize everything he does wrong to your friends. Otherwise, you become too accustomed to trashing him and eventually your friends will only be able to point out his bad qualities to you. Not good.

As a disclaimer, I have talked about all the things above and more, including explaining exactly how long he lasted, read aloud text messages, stalked each and every Facebook photo, and have criticized wardrobe choices. And now I feel awful about it and thank my lucky stars that most guy conversations consist of
“You get head?”
“Yeah.”
“Cool.”
Because I know for sure that I would not want to be talked about the same way that I have discussed these boys in the past.

So tell me: is it alright to tell your best friends your guy’s deep dark secrets?

I know exactly what I want to do with my life, but after a few months in the real world I’m starting to realize all these “bad economy” rumors are not just urban legend. No one is hiring. I keep expanding my job horizons further and further out to the point where I’m filling out Starbucks applications and assuring myself that writing down orders is the same thing as writing a script.

My summer plan of living with my grandparents and moving out in the fall has turned into my life plan of living with my grandparents and learning how to play bridge with them. All I kept saying as I cried to my mom on the phone was that no one told me it was going to be this hard. I knew it wasn’t going to be college, I knew finding a job would take a while, and I even knew living with my grandparents would give me a natural mothball scent that didn’t come off in the shower.

But I didn’t know that not having college to look forward to in the fall and not having a job and not having alternatives to prune juice in the fridge was going to be so depressing. I met a college sophomore this weekend and before I could stop myself I yelled out, “don’t graduate!” I used to hate when people said that to me – as if you had the option to just not graduate (with the exemption of being a 5th year senior).

I think I’m steps away from telling incoming freshman to cherish their four years because life is all downhill after there. And then I’ll know that I’ve truly entered old age.

As much as I would love to silently judge your drunken mistakes, I can’t help but  laugh it off, talk about you to my friends and hope that I just caught you after you had a horrible week (which is slightly understandable, right?) However, in most cases, I caught you in your element, flashing the party your new bedazzled thong while sloppily trying to climb up on the beer pong table to dance.  Ohh, here we go…

There are a few ways that you can tell you’re “that mess” the entire party is talking about (but you can’t hear because you’re busy screaming the lyrics of “If You Seek Amy”).

- Dancing with your arms above your head…to every song…on a table.
- Tossing your cookies on people or just barely before reaching the bathroom.
- Falling down (or even up) the stairs in front of everyone.
- Crying over…literally anything and everything
- “Oh my goddd i lovvee you!”
- Not being afraid to make out with that random guy (or girl) for a few pictures.
- Passing out in random places and finding “please insert here” with an arrow pointing down on your stomach when you wake up.
- Slowly disrobing at a rate of… every five minutes or less.
- Finding yourself hugging the toilet bowl at the end of the night tighter than when you hugged your teddy bear a decade earlier

Well, home girl, don’t sweat your already smeared makeup off, because I’m not criticizing!  This letter is for you drunkies who have taught me many valuable lessons from you’re absolutely annihilated nights.  After much observing of your dazed decisions, I don’t want to say “WTF is wrong with you!?” What I really want to say is Thanks.

Thanks for making me look so much better, mature, put together, and all around sexy while standing next to your drunk ass.

Thanks for being brave enough to steal that 40 oz. from the fridge, and then dumb enough to hand it over to me, FO’ FREE!

Thanks for running down the street screaming with just a tank top and jeans on (in 30 degree weather), allowing the cops to easily spot and tackle you before they get to me.

Thanks for leaving your jacket at the party. I love my new fleece!

Thanks for passing out in the bathroom so I could start flirting with the guy you were falling all over all night.

Thanks for drunkenly opening a tab and offering free drinks to everyone standing around you.

Thanks for giving me and my friends something to laugh at that night, and days later.

But most importantly, Thanks for teaching me how NOT to act at a party.

All that stress has probably caused you to break out, which only causes you to stress more about the nasty bumps on your face and find a way to get rid of them—which doesn’t exist for that pesky mutant acne that’s everywhere now.

I know all this makes you feel like crying, but before you run out and rent some guaranteed tear jerkers and sit at home all weekend watching them while eating a whole tub of Häagen-Dazs®, think about all the great stuff that happened this week that’s sure to cheer you up.

Instead of crying, call up everyone you know and go out tonight!  If you think you have nothing to wear, maybe you can dress up that black T-shirt hanging in the back of your closet in a new way.  Or grab your girlfriends for a shopping trip to spend your tax refund!  You could splurge on a great new tote, or get more for your money with cute new stuff from Target.

Still feel like staying in?  At least do something that will perk you up.  Search the internet for some great new music, make a bet to lose weight before summer officially hits, or laugh at some hilarious Yahoo! Answers questions. The semester coming to an end and papers and final exams looming in the not-so-distant future can only add to the stress you’re already feeling. But cheer up: summer’s almost here!