Thank you for taking your time and answering my questions. It’s always interesting to get to understand other people’s views a bit more. I have some quite different experiences from yours.
You’re asking me, whether I would say that crying is a sign of strength. I don’t view it neither as a sign of strength, nor as a sign of weakness. I take it as a natural reaction to overload of stress/emotion/pain. Being able to cry is physiologically beneficial (you get rid of cortisol) and psychologically it can help you process the things you’re going through more quickly. Trying to appear though by not crying seems counterproductive to me, but I understand in some cultures it is not socially acceptable to cry, especially for men.
When it comes to emotions, I agree it’s a vague term. I use the word for the very basic emotions of sadness, happiness, fear, anger, surprise and disgust, but you’re right that there’s a huge diversity and nuance. I think people need to understand their own emotions to be able to work with them consciously. If I was unable to regulate my emotions, it would be hard for me to make rational decisions. If I suppressed my emotions, I would still be influenced by them, but I would have no conscious control over them, which would again result in limiting my rationality severely.
I find the terms inner strength and beauty to be also very vague. I know a person, who’s super emotional in an uncontrollable way, you’d definitely find them weak, but when they were in a very tough situation, they proved to be totally unbreakable (they acted selflessly despite severe personal damage and were able to save several friends from a similar fate).
I agree with you that it’s reductive to stop on two adjectives. And when it comes to beauty and strength, I value intelligence and compassion much more in both men and women.
Generally, I think it’s a good thing there is a different mix of characteristics in different people. I don’t see any reason to propagate just one way for men and one way for women. People are diverse and I think it’s good for the whole society to embrace the diversity, because that makes the whole society stronger and more flexible, especially in a changing environment.