why can't you kiss men on the cheek? it's just a warm way to say goodbye.
if you want to indicate a little more reserve or distance, esp. with someone you've just met, hold your body away from them at a distance while you gracefully let your head move towards them, touch cheeks, and kiss the air next to their cheek instead of their cheek, with the appropriate cheerful sound. it's more stylized because there is no lip contact, only cheek contact, but it's still warm.
i am constantly kissing people i have just met, men and women, and when i leave a big gathering of people at a cafe or a friend's house i have to go through and kiss all of them one after another, a very ritualized process, so i am probably completely desensitized to what is bothering you. (i live among french people). it sounds like kissing is bothering you in general, for whatever gender. but if the people around you are doing it habitually, they are experiencing it as not a big deal - or purely as a symbol of friendship.
i don't know, i like the custom a lot because you can't really get to pissed at anyone (at least not covertly - you have to bring things out in the open more) or forget to treat them like a full human being if you have to kiss them when you say hello and goodbye.
go ahead, kiss people's husbands. :)
Sure, cheek kissing a la France no problem. But if it's not a local convention and you insist on doing it anyway, then you'd better have a good explanation ("I am a narcissist" doesn't count). Goes a fortiriori for the mouth-kissing thing, chaste or not. I ran into a woman once who had this habit of saying goodbye with a kiss on the mouth, and did it to anyone a notch above casual acquaintance. Seemed like she was motivated by some weird sexual power thing.
oh, i don't go for kissing anyone but a love on the mouth.
i lived in brooklyn for a while, and cheek-kisses were just fine for men, especially if you are already doing so with their wives. usually most men, including husbands, including american husbands, *initiate* that with me anyway.
cheek-kissing usually isn't flirtatious.
Becks: Is this the post we waited all night for, that you wanted to be able to comment on, or is that still coming up?
I told you you'd be let down after all of the buildup.
East Coast? Pfft. I somehow doubt people spend a lot of time cheek-kissing in Philly or Atlanta. As Becks said, it's not at all common here in DC -- although you do see elites doing it from time to time. I've run into the phenomenon on the West coast as well.
It's pretty simple, I think: it's Continental pretension. Not that I object to it all that much, but its adherents could, I think, be broadly described as "uppity".
I don't agree with Tom's hating on the cheek-kiss. The air-kiss hello (which I do not condone) has roots in uppity Continental pretension; the cheek-kiss goodbye is genuine.
This is standard in my circle as well, and I don't particularly like it -- I'd prefer to kiss family only. That said, my understanding of the convention is that you kiss men and women the same way -- cheek only, and mostly cheek contact with a kissy noise. This is for reasonably good friends only, rather than people you've just met.
7: is there a substantial difference? I always assumed one was just a "don't wanna screw up my makeup" version of the other.
I don't really detest the cheek kiss. Several family friends do it, and it doesn't really bug me. But I'd prefer a hug or handshake. There's less chance of accidental headbutting that way.
It's utterly unreasonable to take the term "East coast" literally. People using the term are generally not referring to, for example, Portland, Maine. That said, if in fact cheek kissing is primarily done in the United States among certain subcultures in New York City, and not at all in, say, Boston or D.C., it is probably reasonable to construe it as something other than an east coast phenomenon. On another hand, if I remember correctly, I was cheek-kissed goodbye in Boston this weekend, but the person cheek-kissing was a transplanted New Yorker (who has live there for about six years now).
As I was taking leave of some friends last week, a guy who always kisses me on the cheek kissed me, while the guy standing next to him--who I'm actually closer to, and who I spent the entire evening chatting with--held out his hand. I made a little joke, drawing attention to my strict reciprocity in these matters, a kiss met with a kiss, a hand with a hand.
The kisser has a lesbian roommate, I'm not sure if that makes a difference. I was reflecting that he only started kissing me after we had a break-through moment in conversation. He once kissed me spontaneously while we were talking, out of gratitude at something I'd done for his girlfriend, and after that always makes a point of kissing me good-bye.
9 - The air-kiss just always seemed to have more, heh, airs of pretension to me.
While east coast might not be the appropriate description for the cheek-kiss phenomenon, I don't think northeast misses much of the territory where it takes place. Anyway, I love the cheek kiss. I don't like having just the option of a nod (too formal) or a hug (too intimate) to greet women.
I don't think the cheek kiss is necessary to greet men. There are enough grades to the handshake to cover whatever it is you want to say.
And the cheek kiss is alive and well in DC. Among a set whose blood is bluer than mine, perhaps, but with whom I fraternize at art galleries.
Wow, I've never once been kissed goodbye or hello on the cheek or elsewhere in New York, except on a date. The unwarm hug is very common in my circles, though, and I simultaneously hate it and have been known to do it and then angst about how everyone's thinking about how insincere I am. I agree with mmf!: the continental cheek kiss is a really good custom--you acknowledge everyone present, there aren't too many confusing degrees, and because the emphasis is more on a kind of recognition than conveying affection (IME anyway) it doesn't ever feel fake.
And the cheek kiss is alive and well in DC. Among a set whose blood is bluer than mine, perhaps, but with whom I fraternize at art galleries.
This cements the cheek-kiss as a mark of "continental pretension", not any particular place. I always thought cheek-kissing was supposed to be a stereotype of people in L.A., which explained why I've never seen or experienced it once in my entire life in Pennsylvania.
Wow, I've never once been kissed goodbye or hello on the cheek or elsewhere in New York, except on a date.
I have even had a client kiss me goodbye. I found it slightly disconcertning. But as a westerner, I am baffled by many of the customs here in New York, the kissing thing discussed here among here. But hey, it's their city, they can do what they want, and the price us outsiders pay for living in the capital of the world is learning to accept it.
I don't like having just the option of a nod (too formal) or a hug (too intimate) to greet women.
There's always the pelvic thrust. (It really drives you insayayayaya-ane.)
I'm not sure that it's continental pretension, or if it is, it's mixed with something else. I have always kissed my girlfriends, and only started kissing male friends more recently--it seems like a signal of comfort with women and changing attitudes about being perceived as gay or feminine. In the case of the kisser I mention above, his kissing and air of warmth seems like a deliberate display of sexual ambiguity.
Like Idealist, I've even encountered the cheek-kiss in work settings in NYC. A guy from our Manhattan office that I've worked with on some small projects stopped by my office last week to let me know that Friday was going to be his last day. We exchanged our obligatory "It's been nice working with you"s, swapped personal email addresses that will never be used, and said our goodbyes, which involved him giving me a hug and a peck on the cheek. That would never happen in the Virginia office.
I've had partners from my old firm give me cheek-kisses when meeting after I left the firm; I think because my status changed from subordinate to peer/possible source of referrals. I must say I really don't like it -- I'd prefer to kiss only people I'm personally attached to.
I remember having several conversations about the new trend of kissing one's male friends about 1997 or so.
Doesn't "East coast" mean "gay or Jewish"?
Ding ding ding! A cigar for the gentleman from Minnesota!
No, that's what "member of the entertainment industry" means.
it does seem odd to cheek-kiss *business partners* - unless you spend so much time at your job that they have become friends. in new york...that sounds pretty likely the case.
i am much more comfortable cheek-kissing people than hugging people - unless they are genuine friends.
i conceived a lasting dislike of a family friend whom i now avoid definitively, because he hugged me *way* too...invasively? non-non-sexually? at my father's funeral. he's my father's age. it was just a horrible thing to do to someone. very few mistakes like that happen with cheek-kissing - it's more ritualized and both sides can withdraw more easily.
The only time I've had to deal with the cheek kiss phenomenon was at Brown, and then only among certain circles--essentially some smokin' hott women in art history and comp lit, so I wasn't complaining. It wasn't something I personally ever thought I'd find myself doing, though. As to whether it was continental pretension, a fair number of the kissers were continental, and many of them prententious as well. But that might simply be a coincidence.
Happily, the trend never took hold among the hairy guys in history and philosophy.
LB-
maybe they thought your status had changed from "business associate" to "social acquaintance"?
I think maybe I've just never moved in schmancy enough circles to encounter this cheek kissing. Or maybe I have a really grody-looking cheek.
dude. i would kiss your cheek.
If only a promiscuous mmf! would kiss my cheek, but not the regular one, I *must* have a grody-looking cheek.
here is a scary diagrammatical picture of the bise.
http://french.about.com/library/weekly/aa051801f.htm
however, the regional stuff is crap. my personal take is that only friends' mothers (whenever i am honored enough to be introduced to them, kind of rare) bestow the fourfold bise. overwhelming maternal bounty...
The cheek kissing thing always unnerves me. For one, it generally takes me by surprise, so it's inevitably awkward. For another thing, if it's a real kiss, that seems to me to be something that's reserved for close intimates; and the air kiss is just freakishly fake. What's the point? I don't see what's wrong with a handshake for acquaintances or a hug for friends.
That said, I'm cool with the whole cheek kiss thing among actual Europeans and some friends with whom I've gotten used to it, or where it fits their personality. But I'm totally on board with the "contential affectation" interpretation where Americans are concerned.
For me, the awkward times happen most often when I'm greeting the husbands of my boyfriend's female friends. The ladies are distant, but try to be warm, while their husbands either fear me or come in way too close and kiss me almost on the mouth.
In fact, one of my best friend's partners does this every time I see him. He says goodbye by kissing me on the mouth. He's not gay, just very affectionate.
I can do all this kissy business fine, but I always feel like I'm not allowed to lead, and that makes me uncomfortable. It's always the man's decision how to kiss goodbye. It's like ballroom dancing, which irritates me for the same reason.
So, is there a consensus that cheek-kissing is pretentious and to be avoided, unless particularly justified?
I second (third) the viewpoint that this is linked to social class. Here in Philadelphia, cheek-kissing almost unheard of in my business environment (nonprofit world) and relatively rare among my (20s/30s, middle/upper-middle-class) social circle. Among older (50+) and richer people, it's pretty common.
I don't like kissing anyone that I'm not already personally close to. I try to use body language to communicate to people that a handshake will be just fine, thanks. This works reasonably well, at least among Anglos.
On preview: And what Dr. B said about where it fits their personality. It would feel strange NOT to kiss my Puerto Rican friends.
mmf!, I dispute that! In Switzerland, the rule was three. The Parisian banlieusards I've known insisted on four. The bourgeois mothers I've known did two, but were more likely to actually kiss the cheek directly.
Well, I'm a man, but I never feel like it's my decision. At home in Australia, some female family members seem to require a kiss on the cheek but others don't, close gay friends decided we kiss on the lips, in arty settings like gallery openings it's a kissing free-for-all. In London where I work I have no idea what the rules are, and I'm not sure if anyone else does either. Dutch women friends demand three kisses, which is frankly too many (but at least they know this, and the number is announced beforehand in a jesting manner).
And then there's here in Indonesia, where nobody kisses anybody for the most part. But (whodathunkit!) there are all kinds of other complexities to deal with.
37: (for cheeks)
38: i tend to avoid switzerland. the only parisian banlieusards i know are iranian exiles and not very typical. so our anecdotal evidence is not going to coincide very much...except to say the rules are not hard and fast. but at least we can agree regional stuff like "4 bises in Nantes" etc. is not true!
In my case, I'm talking about NYC people in their 20s and 30s who work in the arts.
39: Yes, the absolute WORST is when someone announces how many kisses they want. "Three, please!" a Korean lady of my acquaintance says. I feel like saying, "Listen, bitch, you're gonna get what I gives ya."
Ok, I have to admit now that I know absolutely nothing about Nantes, except that there was this edict signed there this one time.
AWB, i would say as the woman you absolutely do get to decide. Just pre-emptively set the tone for whatever you prefer right away at the start...you might be feeling uncertain & so handing over the lead to the other person by default.
SCMT, it's regional/cultural. you're used to your norm. i wouldn't kiss anybody's cheeks in the Midwest, but i would be considered a cold stand-offish person - someone having pretensions of a different sort - if i didn't do it where i live now, or in the US around people who initiate it.
Doesn't "East coast" mean "gay or Jewish"?
What? No way. I always take "east coast" to connote a lack of style, and perhaps more uptight meanness than usual. Maybe that's just because I'm from DC. I'll grant that New York is a great city, but I don't think it gets to define the entire coastline's personality.
Like bphd, it seems natural to me when genuine Europeans do the cheek-kiss. But that's not how we do it in America, dagnabit. The patriotic way to greet people is with a firm handshake and perhaps a friendly inquiry into the other person's opinion of the prospects for this year's corn crop.
Actually, the mouth-kissing with gay friends (which I guess has subverting of dominant paradigms, man, at its core) is the only version I'm comfortable with. Though needless to say I worry about catching teh gay.
Personally, I never know if there's going to be a hug, or a kiss, or two kisses, or what. I try to read the signals, but there are times when I misread, and give a kiss on the cheek when clearly one was not expected, and usually this happens in front of my girlfriend.
Doesn't "East coast" mean "gay or Jewish"?
I guess when I said it, I was tempted to write "WASP" but remembered that my midwestern friends who are technically white anglo-saxon protestants don't see there's a difference between themselves and East Coast old white money who send their kids to summer camp in Maine, live in wealthy suburbs of big cities, have jobs in the publishing industry or non-profit development, argue about whether Paris is getting boring, and talk endlessly of real estate and private schools.
To add to Anthony, I kiss gay male friends on the lips when saying goodbye, but usually that's because I'm hanging out with more than one gay male, and everyone's saying goodbye that way.
44: I think "European custom" is a decent justification. But in 'Murika, it should be eschewed.
This reminds of the time I was visiting with my folks in Tahoe City - still a provincial town despite the ski industry - and I met one of their close friends who I had met twice before. Me, coming from SF (urban, gay, etc.), immediately did what I would normally do on seeing someone I'd already met previously, which is greet her with a short hug and kiss on the cheek. (BTW, writing that makes me feel odd, odder yet when I consider how NATURAL that particular two-step move is.)
Here she was, in her sixties and a little on the stern side and she ACTUALLY PUT HER HAND OUT TO STOP ME. "WHERE did we meet before?" I had to recount when and where we had met previously before I could hug her hello.
Needless to say, we shook hands goodbye.
Man, I want to be a crotchety old battleaxe like that. (At the moment, I'm only eligible to be a crotchety thirty-something battleaxe, but I have ambitions.)
Once I told a triple-kissing Dutchwoman we'd compromise on 2, because of not being in the Netherlands. How's that for a proudest moment!
From reading this thread, perhaps my cheek grodiness anxieties can be alleviated, since it's becoming clearer that I just don't move in a kissy milieu. I've worked in hospitals, unis, and non-profits (all unkissy), and my friends are basically similar. The professionally arty friends I have I would say are actually too close to bother with kissing. Though maybe I should ask Clementine the dancer and Lorena the opera singer if they kiss their professional friends.
I've worked in hospitals...
Now THAT is one workplace where I doubt the kissing tradition will ever take off. Seems like the kiss-hello is probably a fantastic way to spread the flu. Or is there protocol to avoid that?
Or is there protocol to avoid that?
the masks help.
54 -- Reckon you should also ask Melissa the stripper.
clementine!
i heard that was one of the trendy new names for girl babies... soon to be passed down by yuppies to everyone else... along with sophie/sophia...
(your friend of course being firmly outside of that generation/trend)
(though maybe she will be interested to meet lots of little one and two year old clementines soon)
Oh, Clementine isn't her real name. I just called her that as part of my project to give everyone I know a comestible-related pseud. But Lorena isn't edible. Hmm...I'll have to revise that one.
I could call her Lorraine, after the quiche, I suppose.
#48:
This is a distinction which badly needs a name. There are people around here (Chicago) who act like you've described, but by and large even the old-settler upper class of the Midwest don't act like that. Although when I think of it, Anglo-Saxon has never seemed very important as a distinction: many upper middle class families have Scotch-Irish and German or Scandanavian roots as well, and this has been true for generations. Protestant is not very important either; "our kind of people" are as likely to be liberal Catholics or Jews, and there's a vast amount of intermarrying going on, within the class and sensibility, but across these once-formidable barriers.
Maybe "WASP" isn't such a bad term after all. As you say, it technically describes a lot of non-Eastern non-upper-class people, who may think you're talking about them, but in context it describes a thin, atypical stratum in the East.
55 - The WHO is trying to promote the elbow bump instead of handshakes to prevent spreading the flu. Lamest greeting ever. I'd rather just bow.
The gay-man-mouth-kiss is something I've only ever seen between straight girls and gay men. I did not realize it had spread to straight men and gay men. Very interesting.
No air-kissing please, we're British.
61: My friends and I call them the "bougies" (since that's what the poor here call them, not imagining candles), but again, this is not a distiction I would have understood in Kansas. I thought of my family as solidly middle-class, since we had enough to get by and sometimes took little trips. When I first read Marx, I imagined I was one of the people the Revolution would have up against the wall. Now that I know what NYers mean by "middle" class, I describe my family as often struggling, upper prole.
I tend to use 'old money' to mean serious WASP-types, of whatever ethnicity.
I did not realize it had spread to straight men and gay men.
I have always (well, dating back to college) kissed my gay friends hello and goodbye. Most of my close female friends as well.
A number of commenters have written in to say that kissing hello and goodbye is an American custom. I wish I could believe that, but the faces they've kissed are not the faces of true Americans.
I have always (well, dating back to college) kissed my gay friends hello and goodbye. Most of my close female friends as well.
You're southern, which is roughly equivalent to being gay in matters of PDA.
I don't participate in any kiss greetings. I live in San Francisco, but I really don't get out much anymore.
I don't think I would like it unless everybody did it. Otherwise, it would be like having an annoying little pop quiz at the end of every social interaction.
Completely, off-topic but if anyone is looking for pre-school riding toy that also supports up to 200 lbs and goes screamingly fast down hills you might want to get one of these and a helmet.
I have a few close female friends who might go for the kiss on the cheek thing but it's not common here in the UK, in my experience. Then again, I don't move in those kinds of social circles.
On the other hand in Prague, as far as I remember, cheek kissing is pretty much the norm between men & women and women & women. I have vague memories of being told off once or twice about it.
I do have some straight male friends who, for a while, used go for the full kiss on the lips thing, sometimes with ostentatious use of tongues, but that stemmed from a particular in-joke among a particular group of people and was done mostly to annoy others. Try kissing another guy in a working man's pub in rural Scotland, and then sit back and 'enjoy' the reaction.
I make a cursory wave-like gesture as my nonverbal correlate to valediction.
That must have been a fun valedictory address. Was there speaking too, or just waving?
"a" fun valedictory "address"? My distinguished colleague seems not to be aware that a valediction is simply any well-wishing, such as often occurs at a parting of ways! Speak "be well" and get thee gone, that kind of thing.
68: It's funny because it's true.
I've checked on this kissing thing with my European friend, and he laughs and says that if you don't actually make contact, it's really annoying and pretentious.
But I'm cool with campy pretention among my campy gay friends. Also, I figure anyone who throws a proper bourgie party with canapes, freely-flowing booze, and undergrads who've been hired to take your coat at the door, can pull off the air kiss. Or people who come by the tradition as a matter of national or regional association.
But everyone else, no. Freaks.
I'll be expecting one on the lips when we finally meet, B.
This is going to be the hottest meet-up EVAR.
Yeah -- I was walking down 6th Ave. the other day coming up on the corner of 35th, and I saw a sign that said "STANDPIPE". And I took it as on omen. (The "B(p)HD" sign is near the meetup location too.)
So the majority of people discussing this topic in a virtual forum appear to advocate against premature physical contact? I guess this should come as no surprise.
I'm pretty sure it all started when I was 12, and became an official member of the KISS Army. Had the patch on my jacket and everything.
79 cracks me up.
Apo, you get tongue. Big, slobbery, pushy tongue.
I still want a photo of the BHD sign. In grad school city, there was a business with a sign that says "T & A Floor Coverings." I always took it as a comment on the relative role of tas in the university hierarchy, and wish I'd gotten a photo.
80: I've mentioned my high school girlfriend, right?
Apo, you get tongue. Big, slobbery, pushy tongue.
SCORE! It's a deal.
81 -- I will try an' remember to bring a camera with me to work one o' these days.
A sufficient condition for WASPiness, which give odds will not offend any regular or semi-regular commenter, is being emotionally invested or faux-ironically emotionally invested in the current membership of the social register. Also, the wikipedia entry was obviously written by someone who is a fan.
That's scary. Whenever I can't figure out why the upper classes behave the way they do, I sing all the lyrics to Lou Reed's "Men of Good Fortune." Then I understand everything.
It seems strangely pleasing that the LA one "continues to almost totally avoid persons in the entertainment field."
In LA they don't actually do the kiss thing; in fact, they miss that touch so much that they crash into one another just to feel something.
Bleg: does anyone know SPSS and want to help me with my homework? It's not really a technical question; I just didn't go to class and want someone's opinion on what my professor means by something.
(No, I'm not doing my homework at work. I'm sick, so I took off early. But I had to do my homework anyway, so I'm not going home.)
I've used SPSS some, but not much (but I used it on a mainframe, back in the dawn of time!) And once or twice since then.
I probably can't help you, particularly without the program open in front of me, but you might as well ask anyway.
Okay, LB, my professor sez on one of my homework questions:
Using the Syntax Window, and the keyword "with" in the correlation command, compute the correlation of each continuous variable with gender. You must go to Analyze>Correlate, but instead of "Ok", click on "Paste". This will open a syntax window. Then enter your "with" statement for gender and "Run" (all). Calculate by hand (using Formula 9.6 from the text) the t value for testing the significance of each of these point-biserial correlations
Now, not having gone to class, I don't know wtf a "with statement" is, but I added the word "with" to this text:
CORRELATIONS
/VARIABLES=sex quiz
/PRINT=TWOTAIL NOSIG
/MISSING=PAIRWISE .
like so:
CORRELATIONS
/VARIABLES=sex with quiz
/PRINT=TWOTAIL NOSIG
/MISSING=PAIRWISE .
and when I run it I do indeed get something that appears to be the point-biserial correlation of quiz score with sex (wouldn't that be the right way to say it, rather than the other way around?). But the thing is, running it without the word "with" gives me the same result, just with a four cell matrix that correlates sex with quiz, sex with quiz, quiz with quiz, and sex with sex, instead of the cute little one cell I get using the "with." So I'm not sure I'm doing what she wants, because it seems too simple.
Thanks!
Sorry, you're over my head. (After I posted that last comment, I realized that I really couldn't think of any question about SPSS that I would be able to answer successfully.)
But it sounds as if you're getting the right results -- I wouldn't worry just because it's too simple.
75- okay, but it's clear that the cheek-kiss isn't the same thing as an air kiss, right? one does always make at a minimum contact of cheeks.
when i was a freshman in college i took a german "stylistics" class where we read an 18th c. text involving hand-kissing, and the professor demonstrated on me what was involved in a courtly hand-kiss. apparently you hold the other person's hand in such a way that your thumb is on top of their hand, and then you kiss your own thumb, delicately avoiding slobbery lip contact with their hand. ickety-ick! and since then, i did have one or two kuess-die-Hand experiences in vienna. mostly high camp, but... see how lucky you guys get off, avoiding this one!
I'm sad that Becks didn't title this post "Kissing to be clever."
I'm sad that I didn't title this post "Call the Doctor"
Becks, how is your devious plan to use Unfogged in order to preview articles for the NYTimes Styles section going?
Yes! I saw that! Although the real Styles-scooping credit goes to AWB.
