Hillary Clinton: 'There's a reason I come across cold and unemotional.'

Cold. Aloof. Unemotional. Shrill. Words that many high-profile female politicians will be all too familiar with. And few more so than US presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.

Just two days ago after a televised debate with rival Donald Trump, Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus tweeted that Clinton “was angry [and] defensive the entire time”, noting that she didn’t smile and looked “uncomfortable”.

Yet, as the 68-year-old explained to juggernaut Facebook page Humans of New York, there are reasons the public form these perceptions. Reasons that usually speak to much more than how often someone smiles, the way they hold themselves or the tone of their voice.

For her, that can be illustrated by one unsettling event that occurred many years ago.

“I was taking a law school admissions test in a big classroom at Harvard. My friend and I were some of the only women in the room. I was feeling nervous. I was a senior in college. I wasn’t sure how well I’d do.

“And while we’re waiting for the exam to start, a group of men began to yell things like: ‘You don’t need to be here.’ And ‘There’s plenty else you can do.’ It turned into a real ‘pile on.’ One of them even said: ‘If you take my spot, I’ll get drafted, and I’ll go to Vietnam, and I’ll die.’

“And they weren’t kidding around. It was intense. It got very personal. But I couldn’t respond. I couldn’t afford to get distracted because I didn’t want to mess up the test. So I just kept looking down, hoping that the proctor would walk in the room.

“I know that I can be perceived as aloof or cold or unemotional. But I had to learn as a young woman to control my emotions. And that’s a hard path to walk. Because you need to protect yourself, you need to keep steady, but at the same time you don’t want to seem ‘walled off.’ And sometimes I think I come across more in the ‘walled off’ arena. And if I create that perception, then I take responsibility.

“I don’t view myself as cold or unemotional. And neither do my friends. And neither does my family. But if that sometimes is the perception I create, then I can’t blame people for thinking that.”

Things may have moved on – enough that a women could soon become leader of the free world – but biases obviously still exist. In another HoNY post, Clinton explains how that plays out in 2016:

“Women are seen through a different lens. It’s not bad. It’s just a fact. It’s really quite funny.

“I’ll go to these events and there will be men speaking before me, and they’ll be pounding the message, and screaming about how we need to win the election. And people will love it. And I want to do the same thing. Because I care about this stuff.

“But I’ve learned that I can’t be quite so passionate in my presentation. I love to wave my arms, but apparently that’s a little bit scary to people. And I can’t yell too much. It comes across as ‘too loud’ or ‘too shrill’ or ‘too this’ or ‘too that’.

“Which is funny, because I’m always convinced that the people in the front row are loving it.”

Image via Instagram @hillaryclinton

The response to Clinton's comments came thick and fast, attracting hundreds of thousands of Facebook reactions in a matter of hours.

"Women all over the world know this as fact, all too much," sympathised one commenter. "Be quiet, but not too quiet. Be smart, but not too smart... it goes on and on."

"Watching the [debate] last night I found myself taken back by her tone. About 10 minutes in I realized I was conditioned to feel that way," wrote another. "If a man had the same tone I would have thought nothing of it. We need to do better. Women do not have to smile and speak softly."

And this: "I honestly don't know why people don't like her Oh wait, she's a strong woman..."