So much kissing going on, all of it so visible. And all of it causing such a stir.
When Danielle Goldey and Meredith Kott kissed during a Dodger game, their show of enthusiasm for the home team earned the lesbian couple a nine-guard escort outside, and a request to never return.
When Vice President Al Gore joined his wife, Tipper, on stage at the Democratic National Convention, he greeted her with a seven-second, intense, face-squishing smooch, which elicited cries of "Gross!" and "Yuck!"
Why does a little public display of affection, or PDA, cause such a to-do? After all, this is a culture saturated with sexually suggestive and explicit images from television, advertisements and films. What's wrong with a little hand-holding, cuddling and kissing in public after taking in a steamy episode of "Sex and the City"?
The reasons for discomfort vary, explain social scientists, but the two recent smooch fests, like many PDAs, primarily are an invasion of personal space. "When you pay money to see a movie or turn on the television, the viewer agrees to see Bruce Willis kiss somebody or to see a steamy scene in a soap opera," said Marty Klein, a Palo Alto sex therapist and publisher of the electronic newsletter Sexual Intelligence.
"But when you stumble on [a PDA] unexpectedly, it forces you to be a voyeur. Some people are resentful that the role of audience member has been imposed upon them without their permission." Becoming an unwitting voyeur may also elicit a flurry of uninvited feelings with a sexual subtext.
Speaking of the Al-Tipper smooch, Pepper Schwartz, a University of Washington sociologist, said, "It wasn't a ritualistic kiss." While many pundits claim the kiss was a staged moment, Schwartz believes it was a spontaneous show of affection. "It was felt and it was desired. We understand manufactured emotion, but we don't understand real emotion. If it is real emotion, it is a threat."
Naturally, some displays of affection are socially sanctioned. A hand on the shoulder, an arm around the waist or a brief hug doesn't violate the culturally acceptable. But when a kiss is more passionate and emotional than a brisk peck, "there is an element of unpredictability," said Klein. "It is: 'Are they going to put their hands down somebody's clothes? What else are they going to do?' "
