Passage 1

British men are changing their traditional image but still are not as emotional in public as Americans, a new survey shows. When it comes to raw emotion, the Brits are now happy to shed tears quite openly-but Italians can still“out-sob”them. “Thirty percent of all British males have cried in the last month. That is a very high figure,” said Peter Marsh, director of the Social Issues Research Centre which took the emotional temperature of Britain.”Only two percent said they could not remember when they last cried.” Long gone is the “No Tears— We’re British” era when emotion was considered distinctly bad form. According to this survey, almost half the men opened the floodgates over a sad movie, book or TV program. Self-pity got 17 percent crying. Nine percent sobbed at weddings. “You can see what is happening over the generations. Role models burst into tears at the drop of a hat-people like Beckham with his New Man image. He had a little cry when he took his son Brooklyn to school for the first time," Marsh said. Women’s battle for equal rights has certainly had an effect, too-both in the workplace and at home. “Men in their twenties or thirties are interacting with women on equal terms much more so than a generation ago. They have to relate to the opposite sex. Women become more man-like and men become more female. This transfers into the workplace too.”Marsh said. From the days of Empire, the British have always considered themselves models of reserve,haughtily mocking“excitable foreigners” who show no restraint. Marsh argued the divide was still there：“We have probably not caught up with the Americans or the Italians when it comes to the actual display of emotions. But we are clearly shifting. What we take as typical British reserve has been significantly eroded.”

British men used to be quite reserved. But now they_______ .