Kissing Europeans

There was an interesting article on the Guardian website recently. It was the brilliant photo of a clumsy Gordon Brown embracing a Carla Bruni that drew me to the article. It is true that for a Brit, the question of social kissing (which itself is an odd expression, alluding a little to the concept of a social smoker; someone who lights up when a little tipsy, or when surrounded by people who are smoking), is a tricky one.

In France, it’s relatively easy for a girl. You kiss everyone, male and female, the required amount of ‘bises,’ which depends on your location in the country, and occasionally on your social standing. It is sometimes a little an inconvenient and time-consuming convention; I remember on a school bus once, at each stop children would get on, and they would not sit down until they had made their way along the bus greeting each person. This takes a while, and the bus driver won’t wait, so you could go as far as to say that kissing in France is dangerous!

It isn’t, however, that clear cut. The Guardian article claims that research in Calais confirmed that 50% of the people go in for 2 kisses, and the remainder go in for 3. In my years’ residency in Calais, I did not once come across someone who insisted on trois bises as opposed to the more common two. In the village where I lived during a school exchange in the South-East of France, the custom was three kisses, and yet in Sisteron, where I attended lycee as part of this exchange, the norm was two. It was up to you to decide the cut-off point between the two towns, and to remember who came from where.

Then there’s the man-on-man kissing, which to unaccustomed eyes is a funny sight. Not because I am homophobic, or because I don’t agree with men being affectionate; but it’s really not something you see very often in the UK. To be fair, most French guys have a core group of guy friends they kiss, and with the deprived remainder, a handshake suffices. I cannot imagine British guys, who will usually only go as far as an awkward pat on the back and an ‘alright mate,’ going cheek-to-cheek with their male friends for the sake of greeting each other!

In Italy there’s a lot of kissing too. And also in Spain. Even in Switzerland – even in German Switzerland, where friends (and actually it is only in very informal familiar situations) greet each other with three kisses. So why are we Brits so keen to avoid physical contact? Risk of infection? Social awkwardness? People often ask me “So if you don’t kiss when you greet each other, what do you do?” and I really have to think about it – the answer is, I think, that we simply say hello, and then move onto the conversation (usually about the weather).

So now that I have fully embraced the European kissing culture, my dilemma is that I find it hard to gauge the whole kissing thing in the UK. There are people who kiss. There are people who kiss once. There are others who go for two. But since they don’t wear stickers on there forehead making this clear, you have to guess. I have many more embarrassing kissing experiences in the UK now that I do in Europe, because there simply is no social convention for it yet.

Here's the link to ther article: http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2008/aug/05/humanbehaviour.familyandrelationships