There are many variations. A classic: the perfectly executed "air kiss," often performed by two women who dislike each other, who wear makeup they don't want smeared and who both resemble Bette Davis in her middle years. They approach, incline the planes of their cheeks. Three to four inches from contact, they close their eyes in a split-second transport of fraudulent bliss, and smack their lips minutely upon nothing, as if releasing little butterflies. A somewhat rarer treat: the "hair tangle," which requires a tall, long-haired woman and a shorter man; woman inclines head to offer cheek, man goes to peck cheek, woman's hair falls in way, man ends with lips and glasses entangled in hair. Rapid disengagement follows.
One chemist thinks that it all began when cavemen licked their neighbors' cheeks for the salt on them. Whatever its primal origins, social kissing seems to be resounding with greater frequency around the nation. Anyone who watched Jimmy Carter's Inaugural receptions would think that the entire capital would be down with mononucleosis by now. For a man once regarded as remote behind his barricade of teeth, Carter is a formidable social kisser, somewhat more subdued about it than Lyndon Johnson, but just as relentless. During his Inaugural parties, Carter gave a virtuoso performance, clutching women one-handed or two-handed as he delivered his kisses of greeting.
Some Northerners attribute the new President's demonstrativeness to Southern ways. But an Atlanta public relations woman, Joanna Hanes, declares that "social kissing is more a Northern, sophisticated fad that seems to be moving south." In fact, like the Second Great Awakening of the 19th century, the epidemic of social kissing has persisted for some years and touched almost every section of the country. In Boston, Beacon Hill ladies can be seen rubbing cheeks at their clubs. Among usually subdued Midwesterners, the custom is growing, although one partygiver in Chicago admits: "Once when I kissed a fellow on the lips, he nearly had a heart attack. He was afraid of getting germs and he wiped his mouth afterward."
Perhaps nowhere is kissing more widely and elaborately practiced than in Manhattan, whose nervous system, from SoHo to Sardi's and on uptown, handles an immense traffic of social signals. But social kissing is also rampant in California, usually in the form of a double peck on the cheeks. Many believe it has gone too far. Says Los Angeles Social Leader Betsy Bloomingdale: "I find myself kissing and wishing I hadn't. You risk being rude if you kiss one person and not another. And there are awkward moments when you don't know whether to kiss or not to kiss. Usually, you kiss just to be safe."