Men Don't Cry

 Not quite what I thought i would learn from JStor's How Upper Lips Got Stiff, but here it is:

The true origin of the “stiff upper lip,” however, lies in the United States. In 1815, it appeared in the Massachusetts Spy; additionally, when George bids goodbye to Uncle Tom in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s 1852 novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin, he asks to maintain a “stiff upper lip.” The phrase also appears in the Dictionary of Americanisms (1848). The attitudes of politicians in the United States demonstrate that emotional restraint was considered a virtue in the American imagination as well. During the Spanish-Cuban War (1895-1898), American accounts in support of Cuba disparaged Spanish soldiers by portraying them as childlike. Regarding Spanish troops, an author in the magazine Arena wrote, “I have seen a whole company crying like children because one of their number had received a letter from home, and the rest were homesick.”

Stoicism as a tool of imperialism, hmm. Seems to me another way to dehumanize the colonized. 

sch 3/9