Basic Trope: Men aren't seen crying on the basis that it's not manly.
- Straight: Bob isn't normally given to crying, while Alice will cry often through either sentiment or sadness.
- Exaggerated: Bob is The Stoic who never emotes at all, while Alice is the Hysterical Woman.
- Downplayed: Both had their sad moments, though Bob hides his eyes away to make it more ambiguous.
- Justified:
- Bob was raised in a society where it's considered emasculating for a man to cry.
- Bob is The Stoic, or at least not very emotionally sensitive.
- Bob is chopping onions.
- Inverted:
- Bob is very emotionally sensitive and cries fairly often.
- Bob is driven to cry over trivial things, such as losing at a video game.
- Bob is very emotional, while Alice is almost never seen crying.
- Alice refuses to cry because she thinks others will see her as weak.
- Subverted: Bob is at a friend's funeral and doesn't shed a tear the whole time. When he goes home, however, the death of his friend sinks in and he begins to cry over his loss.
- Double Subverted: Until we realize that this is just what his wife imagines him doing and he really never breaks down in tears.
- Parodied: Bob is around age 10 and is shown getting pushed down a flight of stairs, trampled under a crowd of students, hit in the groin with a brick and getting a splinter. He hardly changes his expression.
- Zig Zagged: Bob's friend dies, and he doesn't shed a tear over it during the funeral. When he goes home, he finds that he's alone, and begins to let it all out... only for his colleagues to come over, forcing him to stop again. In the end he cries his heart out anyway, and he decides not to care about who sees him do it.
- Averted: Manly Tears. Or, in really subversive works, unmanly tears.
- Enforced: "We have to show that the main character isn't some pussy, so we can't have him crying."
- Lampshaded: "Men aren't supposed to cry, dammit! It's not cool."
- Invoked: When Bob is a boy, we see him scrape his knee and cry about how much it hurts. His father comforts him by telling him to suck it up "because a real man doesn't cry about being hurt".
- Exploited: Bob uses his seeming inability to cry to unnerve his enemies, who think that because he's emotionless, that means he's unbreakable.
- Defied: At a funeral, Bob cries, and his male friends pat him on the back and comfort him.
- Discussed: "Hold it together." "But its so sad!"
- Conversed: "Man, I really wonder why Bob hasn't cried yet. You'd think an entire season of trauma would at least make him shed one tear or two."
- Deconstructed:
- Bob was raised with the belief that men who cry are weak and effeminate. Thanks to this, he suppresses all his emotional anguish to keep up an image in front of others. One day, it gets too much for him and he has an emotional breakdown.
- Bob is potentially seen as a sociopath or a heartless man, since he won't cry from things that are sad, not even when a loved one dies.
- Bob was so conditioned to never cry, that he doesn't know what to do when he does eventually cry.
- Bob has a disorder that prevents him from crying, or even feeling sad.
- Reconstructed:
- Bob finds other ways of expressing and coping with his pain (writing music, doing exercise, etc.)
- Bob makes it clear that just because he doesn't visibly react to tragedy, it doesn't mean he isn't affected.
- Alice schedules a therapy session for Bob, so that he can learn to deal with his emotions.
- Bob seeks the help of a psychiatrist and gets a prescription for some medications.
- Played For Laughs: Bob goes through an over-the-top sequence of trying to prevent himself from crying while being subjected to physical pain.
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