By Chelsea Reil

So, Hillary cried. Big deal.

Everyone is making such a big fuss about the Portsmouth, N.H. incident. “Is Hillary Clinton going to come off as weak and overly-emotional?” “Is this going to make her more relatable?” “Does this mean she’s not really a robot?” So many questions were flying around, and the New Hampshire primaries answered them all.

And let’s be serious, she didn’t actually cry. The way everyone made it seem, you would think she was sobbing into her coffee. The Wall Street Journal made her seem like an emotional wreck, claiming she was “crying softly” as she spoke to voters. Not a single tear was actually shed. She showed the same amount of emotion I display whenever I see a commercial asking me to donate money to underprivileged kids in Africa.

I would just like to say that I, for one, don’t really like it when people cry in public; it makes me extremely uncomfortable and I tend to be really awkward about it. I understand there are certain circumstances in which crying is allowed, say while attending a funeral or after falling doing some stairs. But those instances are few and far between.

That being said, I think Hillary is a genius. Well, maybe not her, per se, but her campaign team is top notch. I think this is exactly what she needed to get ahead of Obama, The Golden Child Who Can Do No Wrong, in New Hampshire.

She’s no longer the cold, steely, unapproachable android she once was. Yes, she still has her pantsuits and odd haircut and yes, she’s still just as determined as ever to win big and make it all the way to Pennsylvania Avenue, but she’s going there with softer edges.

But the question we all should be asking are: Was it real? Was she really overcome by the power of what she was saying to well-up like that? Or was it calculated? Did Patti Solis Doyle realize that something drastic had to be done to win this thing? No one can know for sure. I would like to believe the tears were real; they seemed genuine and besides, I’d be sick to my stomach if she got elected, knowing that she manipulated the people in America in such an intense and personal way. But hey, she’s a politician, just like the rest of them. I wouldn’t put it past her.

In reality, she’s damned either way. We want her to be strong, tough and able to handle the presidency. She does that, and she gets criticized for being stiff, tough and disagreeable. We want her to be feminine, soft and understanding. She does that, and everyone across the nation flips out, thinking she is overly-emotional and weak. Poor Hillary, it seems she just can’t catch a break.

But then she does! She wins New Hampshire and shocks us all. No one knew what was going to happen, but we all thought we had a pretty good idea and it didn’t involve Hillary winning. Obama seemed to be a shoe-in, seeing as how he was filling Nashua High School’s auditorium four times over and drawing people from all ages to see him speak. But maybe that was the problem: too many people from out of state, too many kids dragged along by there parents. The reason doesn’t matter now, because Hillary won. Albeit, only by two percentage points (according to CNN) but hey, who’s counting? Oh right, everyone is.

So Hillary, a little advice: just be honest. I know, this is hard for a politician to do. But if in reality you are a crying, emotional mess, then hey, don’t let me or any of the other 220 million eligible voters in this country stop you.

– Chelsea Reil can be reached at [email protected].