“For Serious?” News of the Day: Women’s tears are a boner-killer

It’s only the beginning of 2011 and I think I can accurately predict that this will win for Most Pointless Fucking Story of the Year. And it seems every major news source is covering it:

The smell of women’s tears is a real turn-off for men, according to a new scientific study. Men who took a whiff of women’s tears not only produced less testosterone, they also found looking at images of women less titillating, reports the Los Angeles Times. Scientists hypothesize that emotional crying evolved as a means of communication. “We’ve uncovered the chemical word for ‘no,’ or ‘not now,’ ” said neuroscientist Noam Sobel of the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel. Researchers expected that the tears cried by six women watching My Sister’s Keeper would elicit empathy in men. Instead, it torpedoed their libido, suggesting that crying may have been a means of thwarting unwanted sexual advances.

While the New York Times gets into more of the nitty gritty behind the study, media coverage of studies like this just allow the right headlines and cherry-picked coverage to send sexist and stereotypes messages about gender roles and relationships when, let’s be real here: whatever evolutionary reason is behind why we cry (not holding my breath for a study on men’s tears), in this day in age, people — not just women — cry usually because of individual emotions, not as some sort of “no sex” code for teh menz. Sheesh.