Take note, Jill Biden – these are the new rules of kissing

Well, that’s one way of getting your distracted spouse’s attention. As President Joe Biden was preparing to deliver his State of the Union speech last night, his wife, Jill, stole the show by kissing Kamala Harris’s husband right on the mouth (yes, eyes closed and everything). What in real life was possibly a case of distance miscalculation - a ‘by the lips’ peck accidently becoming an ‘on the lips’ embrace - transformed on camera into the sort of passionate clinch we usually reserve for the final scene of a weepy romantic film.

One can only imagine the flush of shame Jill Biden and Doug Emhoff felt upon seeing they had inadvertently caused a Twitter storm. Most of us have preemptively moved in for an air kiss when the person opposite is sticking out their arm for a formal handshake - and that’s awkward enough - but nothing equals the feeling of accidentally zoning in on the mouth.

I did it once after visiting an admittedly very handsome Parisian osteopath in my early twenties. I’m not sure if it was because of all the contortions we had performed trying to fix my painful back, or because I had spent most of the last half an hour in my underwear, but as we said goodbye, I - uncharacteristically and without thinking - leaned in and kissed him on the lips. He smiled, but I was far too English to be anything other than mortified and left immediately, never to return.

Some of the embarrassment, I suspect, comes from the fact it takes us back to those dreadful days of teenage lunging on the dancefloor, where one wrong move felt like the most horrifying thing that had ever happened. But I also think it’s justified, as lip-on-lip action really should be reserved for romantic partners.

Small children, of course, are slightly different, and many people with under-fives say they welcome the occasional dribbly kiss. But there seems to be an age barrier of acceptability; online, sporting stars David Beckham and Tom Brady have been pilloried for kissing their kids on the lips, who were respectively aged seven and 11 at the time.

A quick office poll on adult lip kissing lands heavily on the side of ‘don’t do it’. The idea of smooching colleagues provokes such eye-rolls of horror that I’m almost offended - and not one person I spoke to kisses their parents or siblings anywhere near the mouth. My own brother would actively recoil if I ever tried this, and television seems to agree it’s a bad idea - as shown by the Friends episode where Ross desperately tries to avoid his mouth-kissing aunt.

Lip-on-lip greetings among friends feels slightly less gruesome, although most people only admit to doing it drunkenly, or with the intention of moving things up a gear. Anyone considering kissing their mates should consider a) whether the other party actually wants to, and b) whether it now looks like you fancy them. Just note the furore after Nicole Kidman and Alexander Skarsgard embraced on the lips at the Emmys with her husband sitting right next to her.

As for cheek kissing, while it may be far more acceptable, it is markedly less popular post-Covid. The pandemic saw people in certain circles go from taking a proudly French approach to les bises, to looking distraught if anyone dared come within touching distance. I can’t be the only one who, in the aftermath of lockdown, did an awkward ‘will we, won’t we?’ dance that usually ended in a friendly wave.

Now, with the spectre of Covid thankfully behind us, kissing is back on the table - but should it be? If you are going to air kiss at parties, or in certain professional settings, always do two, rather than one, and try not to actually put your lips on someone’s cheek or (God forbid) make a ‘mwah, mwah’ noise. Personally, I’d rather hug my closest friends and family hello, and a hand or arm clutch often feels more intimate than a knock of cheekbones.

As for kissing on the lips. Please, no - unless you’re my husband (or my osteopath).