--- ---  # Hillary Clinton Addresses Perception That She's Cold: 'You Need to Protect Yourself'  by [Samantha Cooney](https://time.com/author/samantha-cooney/)  ## Samantha Cooney Updated: Jan 17, 2024 3:51 PM UTCPublished: Sep 8, 2016 7:05 PM UTC  Democratic presidential nominee former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton speaks to reporters on the tarmac at Westchester County Airport on September 8, 2016 in White Plains, New York. Hillary Clinton spoke to reporters and took questions before leaving New York to campaign in North Carolina and Missouri. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images) Democratic presidential nominee former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton speaks to reporters on the tarmac at Westchester County Airport on September 8, 2016 in White Plains, New York. Hillary Clinton spoke to reporters and took questions before leaving New York to campaign in North Carolina and Missouri. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)Justin Sullivan—Getty Images  by [Samantha Cooney](https://time.com/author/samantha-cooney/)  ## Samantha Cooney Updated: Jan 17, 2024 3:51 PM UTCPublished: Sep 8, 2016 7:05 PM UTC Throughout her political career and the 2016 election, Hillary Clinton [has been plagued with criticism](http://motto.time.com/4441371/hillary-clinton-sexist-comments/) that she’s too cold or distant, and now she’s opening up about where she thinks this perception comes from. In a post published on Thursday on the [Humans of New York’s](https://www.facebook.com/humansofnewyork/photos/a.102107073196735.4429.102099916530784/1362236273850469/?type=3&theater) Facebook page, [Clinton](http://motto.time.com/4425974/dnc-powerful-women-quotes/?iid=sr-link3) said: “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.’” The post comes only a day after Reince Priebus, the chair of the Republican National Committee, [chastised the Democratic presidential nominee](http://motto.time.com/4483693/reince-priebus-hillary-clinton-smile/) for not smiling during Wednesday’s Commander-in-Chief forum. In the post, she details an experience where she [faced sexism](http://motto.time.com/4361509/the-hidden-sexism-in-calling-out-hillary-clintons-12000-armani-jacket/?iid=sr-link4) head on while a senior at college waiting to take [a law school admissions test at Harvard](http://motto.time.com/4206533/hillary-clinton-advice-to-her-younger-self/?iid=sr-link5). She was one of only a few women in the room, and she says her male classmates made a point to tell the women that they didn’t belong. Clinton [told the same story to _New York Magazine_‘s](http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/05/hillary-clinton-candidacy.html) Rebecca Traister in a piece published in May. “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,” she wrote. “But I couldn’t respond. I couldn’t afford to get distracted because I didn’t want to mess up the test.” “I don’t view myself as cold or unemotional. And neither do my friends. And neither does my family,” she said. “But if that sometimes is the perception I create, then I can’t blame people for thinking that.” Read the full post below: Hillary Clinton Addresses Criticism That She's Cold ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/4484275/hillary-clinton-cold-sexism-humans-of-new-york/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/4484275/hillary-clinton-cold-sexism-humans-of-new-york/"},"headline":"Hillary Clinton Addresses Perception That She's Cold: 'You Need to Protect Yourself'","datePublished":"2016-09-08T19:05:26.000Z","dateModified":"2024-01-17T15:51:35.000Z","description":"'I had to learn as a young woman to control my emotions'","url":"https://time.com/4484275/hillary-clinton-cold-sexism-humans-of-new-york/","keywords":["motto"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt020c1d7759a2b90a/6988a541524fc0a007df96b0/hillary-clinton-humans-new-york-sexism.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Samantha Cooney","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/samantha-cooney/"}],"articleSection":"","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt020c1d7759a2b90a/6988a541524fc0a007df96b0/hillary-clinton-humans-new-york-sexism.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"Hillary Clinton Speaks To The Press Before Departing For Campaign Trip To North Carolina","caption":"Hillary Clinton Speaks To The Press Before Departing For Campaign Trip To North Carolina","creditText":"Justin Sullivan—Getty Images","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/tag/motto/","name":"motto"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/4484275/hillary-clinton-cold-sexism-humans-of-new-york/","name":"Hillary Clinton Addresses Perception That She's Cold: 'You Need to Protect Yourself'"}}]}] ```