A female friend who I hadn’t seen in several months and I greeted each other yesterday with the usual hug and one-cheek kiss. If I had done this in 1970 I would have been looked on as really weird, or I might even have been slapped.
The social norm on kissing has changed in the U.S.; and the norm elsewhere is different: In much of Europe the two-cheek greeting between friends of the opposite sex is standard.
On my first return trip to the Netherlands, I assumed that two-cheek kissing was the norm there. That nearly cost me a broken nose, as the norm there is now the three-cheek greeting kiss. My Dutch friend tells me that the norm changed in the 1980′s or so.
Why do norms change? Does some highly visible individual start the new custom? Do we adopt it from elsewhere (which can’t explain the Dutch three-cheek kiss), so that we Americans might soon be doing an Arab or Latin male-to-male hug/kiss? Given the importance of social norms in conditioning market transactions, it would be good to know where these norms come from and why they change.
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This is not an answer – but I would recommend Connie Willis’ novel Bellwether as a very good exploratiion of the issue.
As a New Yorker I’m told by my LA friends that they can always pick us out at a party because we cheek-kiss our greetings. A friend of mine from Chicago who lives in NY will always “midwest-hug” me at the start of a night and we “NY kiss” when we part ways.
It differs even regionally within The States.
My late mother used to complain that people she barely knew were now hugging her and kissing her. She once said of a fellow “He’s a very nice man but I avoid him because he always hugs and kisses me.” She (born in 1916) much preferred a handshake, with outstretched arm and a spoken “How do you do?” or “Hello”. She viewed the hugs and kisses as a bit…untoward.
A peck on the cheek and a light hug between men and women friends is dandy. But multiple lip-plantings and neck-swivelings, and this between men, too? Yikes, I’m on my way to Flyoverland if it comes to that!
Well, I’m from the Midwest, and if you kiss me, you WILL get slapped.
In France, where I live, the 2 kisses is the norm in Paris and main big cities. 3 kisses can be observed mostly in country side. I would say too, that it depends on your social background: 2 kisses is perceived as more distinguished than 3…I am 34 and it has not changed for a very long time…
Marie-Estelle
When I moved from Ohio to New Jersey I was introduced to the kiss on the cheek greeting. I had not grown up with this form of greeting, usually a hug and only from relatives or close friends. Having studied French, I easily adjusted. What really threw me off was the fact that I work with alumni at a college and as some of the alumni got to know me, they started to kiss me on the cheek. It took a while to get used to.
How about the one-cheek kiss when two MEN meet each other in Buenos Aires, Argentina? It took me some time to get used to it when I was there in 2007 (I am from Brazil), but the biggest problem was to get used NOT to do that when I returned back to Brazil, otherwise people would look on me strange.
All airports should have signs with the local kissing policy!!! LOL