Cafes where you can go to cry: another way to control your emotions
In the cafeteria, a woman is crying alone at a table. She tries to hide it. She's quiet and turns her head toward the window to avoid eye contact. The tissue she's using to dry her tears gives her away. The owner has noticed. She doesn't dare say anything, but every now and then she discreetly glances up from behind the counter to check if she needs to offer help.
In Japan there are the crying cafesThese establishments are designed to cater to people who feel like crying. It's almost like a scheduled act. You don't cry when you feel like it, but rather you set the moment to do so, when you're in the right place. Beyond the strict function of a bar or café, they offer tools to manage heartbreak or even induce it, as if it were a hygienic purge that must be carried out from time to time. Among the services they provide are sad and moving films, music, or books that trigger tears. There are guided sessions and, in the height of absurdity, there are specific venues where they have attractive men to comfort female customers. This initiative is even more disturbing because it presupposes that crying is a female need and that men have the magical gift of healing through mere physical proximity. crying cafes They are perceived as wellness centers. The proliferation of these types of businesses, according to experts, is related to the emotional repression inherent in that culture. Since the public expression of emotions is frowned upon, these establishments are created to manage it with an almost military-like sense of order. It's yet another way of controlling feelings. Creating designated areas where it's legitimate to express feelings is to interpret emotions as a switch. While at first glance they may seem like spaces of freedom, the result is quite the opposite: crying becomes a consumer experience. You pay for the space, for the materials you can use, and even for a supposed tutor who will guide you through the process. You also pay, by the way, for the tissues.
From our point of view, the crying cafes They seem like a social anomaly. But perhaps it's a phenomenon that, in our context, operates in other ways. Emotion in our society isn't repressed, but it has ended up being exploited, channeled, and monetized in a different way, especially from an individualistic perspective. This is what the philosopher and essayist Michel Lacroix has dubbed as the cult of emotionLacroix speaks of the transformation of emotion into the supreme value. A society that prioritizes feeling over understanding and turns emotional experience into a criterion of absolute truth. Emotion has been devouring critical analysis. This is surely a consequence of social media, where everything visceral has greater reach. Virality has ended up normalizing this trend in the face of the challenge of attracting consumers. Realities and talent shows They prioritize drama and present themselves as opportunities for personal growth; television pursues a supposed emotional authenticity in induced and choreographed formats; confessional podcasts proliferate; influencers They show off by yelling in front of their phones, pseudotherapists seek clients online with inflammatory sermons, some companies use grand moral epics to present business deals, and certain journalistic practices claim to be rooted in human narratives, but forget the craft. Melodrama even sells as proof of moral superiority: I'm a good person, so why display my feelings?
Perhaps we should appeal to reason to understand emotion. It's not a way of denying it, but of being aware of what mechanisms can instrumentalize it and under what interests.
