Slip of the Tongue: Why Do Straight Girls Kiss Each Other? Her Campus bravely goes where many other girls have gone before
Say you are writing an article about straight girls who kiss other girls. You need to talk to experts. Who do you call?
Turns out there is a guy who literally wrote the book on kissing, but I'm not sure what qualifies him in practical terms. There are other options: psychologists, women's studies professors, sex therapists. Tyra Banks devoted an entire episode of her talk show to "barsexuals," girls who make out at bars for fun without feeling any sexual attraction towards each other. So you could call Tyra, as long as her incredibly. Slow. Speaking. Doesn't. Drive. You. Insane.
The opinions of experts, though, are functionally useless. Sex psychologists (probably) aren't the ones at the party with you when you're deciding what to do and with whom to do it. What's more important is how we feel about the things we do. Straight girls kiss other girls, but why? And does this actually happen as often as we think? Is it a sign of Some Greater Trend or is it just a fake trend, like those trend pieces in the Times about guys with potbellies? (Seriously, NYT, you've got to stop trying to make those things "happen" because you've seen, like, three fat people.)
So we're asking you: what do you think? Fill out our survey – totally anonymous, of course – and we'll take your replies to put together an article with information from real experts, which is to say, actual college students.
Some thoughts to get you started:
Maybe some girls kiss other girls because guys think it's hot – and there's nothing inherently wrong that. Society is built on a foundation of men and women doing what it takes to get laid. Such is life. And is there that big a difference between doing something because it's fun and doing something because it makes you look hot? Looking hot is fun. The whole thing is confusing from the get-go.
To assume that all straight girls who kiss each other do so for the benefit of guys, though, is ridiculous – it's like saying the only reason girls wear shorts is so boys will look at their legs, when that sartorial decision often has more to do with not sweating your face off in the hottest summer on record. I'd venture to say that, sloppy first attempts at frenching aside, everyone agrees that kissing is fun. Girls kiss boys in whom they have no real interest all the time (you already knew that, right?) so is it that big a leap to kiss a girl you don't want to date either?
Maybe some girls just kiss other girls not because they actually think it's fun but because they feel like they're supposed to think it's fun. Surely you have done something not because it was actually fun but because it was a supposedly fun thing you'll never do again, like jumping in a mosh pit or freezing your ass off in Times Square on New Year's Eve. Girls kissing girls is, like, a thing now. You have to try it just because you can. It's so uncool to have any sexual boundaries. But why is that uncool? When did a boundary become an awful thing? Some boundaries are good. There's that one between Israel and Palestine, for instance, and also condoms.
Maybe kissing is no big deal and we are making a story out of a non-story. It's not like kissing gets you pregnant. It maybe gets you mono. Which sucks, but okay – you'll lose ten pounds, you'll live. Could be that our fixation on this latest variety of PDA crazes is just the lingering influence of our Puritan roots, and is nothing to write home (or a magazine article) about.
