On a winter’s day in New Hampshire, as primary season began to get underway, the frontrunner for the Democratic Party cried – or just sort of watered up; it’s still being debated. The politician was known for being calm and composed, so the media seized the opportunity to portray the senator as emotional under pressure. This candidate still won the Granite State’s primary election, but not by as much as the campaign had predicted, and watery-eyes-gate eventually cost this politician the nomination. It wasn’t Hillary Clinton, and it wasn’t 2008. This happened in 1972, and the candidate was Edmund Muskie, a U.S. Senator from Maine. A newspaper in Manchester printed some malicious attacks against him and his family, which is a pretty understandable reason to get a little defensive, especially when it turned out that the accusations were false. Although Muskie was visibly upset, he maintained that he had snow, not tears, in his eyes. But the damage had been done. Needless to say, I got nervous on Monday night when I heard the talking heads on the radio shrieking, “Hillary cried! Her campaign reaches a new low after Iowa!” This is the shoe that everyone was waiting for to drop: When was she going to cry? “She,” of course, is the operative word in that sentence because all women are emotional and governed by their hormones, right? But Clinton’s emotional moment doesn’t bother me. It’s actually really refreshing to see that the voters of New Hampshire don’t all of a sudden think that Clinton is unfit to be leading our country during a military conflict. Of course, I don’t want my president to start crying in a heated discussion with fellow heads of state. But I also don’t want my president to be totally emotionless to the problems that we face in this country and in this world either. Even George W. Bush admits that he has a good cry every one in a while. “I do a lot of crying in this job,” Bush said in a book that came out last fall. “I’ll bet I’ve shed more tears than you can count, as president.” Now if you’ve seen the video, you would know that Clinton never actually cried, and although she watered up for a moment, she regained her composure as she continued answering the question. And the questioner, an undecided female voter from New Hampshire, did lead into her question by saying that it would be “very personal.” “How do you do it?” It’s a valid question. For every candidate, an election is an emotionally and physically draining process that goes on, endlessly, for a full year or more. Your life is ruthlessly examined. One poorly chosen word, one vote against a bill that had a popular provision buried deep within its earmarks, one bitter acquaintance from college might take you down. Not to mention, these candidates are running on less sleep than a freshman during finals. Indeed, how do they do it? Even the “light” follow-up that the undecided female voter from New Hampshire mentioned – “Who does your hair?” – has its own implications. A woman running for president, in case you haven’t noticed, has to look perfectly put together at all times (but not too beautiful, or then she can’t be taken seriously). Was it not only a few weeks ago when the Drudge Report ran a huge picture of Clinton looking wrinkly and tired on the campaign trail? No wonder I see so many commercials on TV for firming face cream chock full of chemicals and minerals – even a woman running for president is subject to the standards that we have for weathergirls rather than the same ones we have for the old white men running against her. There’s something else I hear in that question. It’s the question all women ask themselves if they want to start a family and continue to work: How do I do it? I think of my mother, who raised me by herself after my parents divorced 16 years ago and who now owns her own small business, and I ask, how did she do it? Could I have done it myself? And I think of Clinton, who is a talented and intelligent lawyer and politician, who redefined the role of first lady when she could have been governor or president in her own right, who did it all while raising a teenage daughter in the White House, and who is now running to be the leader of our country despite all of the public scrutiny she has been under for her marriage, her looks and all sorts of other issues unrelated to her abilities, and I ask, how does she do it? But let’s turn back to 1972 one last time, because another remarkable event happened that year. Shirley Chisholm, a U.S. representative from New York City, became the first woman and the first African-American to win a presidential primary, taking 66 percent of the vote in New Jersey. Chisholm had little money and resources compared to her rivals, but she had something more important to run for: the future. “I ran because somebody had to do it first,” she wrote in 1973. “The next time a woman runs, or a black, or a Jew or anyone from a group that the country is `not ready’ to elect to its highest office, I believe that he or she will be taken seriously from the start.” I guess you still don’t get the luxury of being taken seriously from the start when you were a first lady who wanted to create meaningful policy and have her own ambitious career. But with this victory in New Hampshire, people must be willing to take Clinton seriously now.

• Emily Liner is a senior in the College and a contributing editor of THE HOYA. She can be reached at linerthehoya.com. SKIRTING THE ISSUES appears every other Friday.