PDA

It’s five a.m. and I’m cracking eggs into a bowl sleepily as the cake decorator plays BBC radio yet again. I was way too tired and way too cranky to be listening to the dull voices broadcasting through BBC. I know that sounds offending, but I have always found news voices dull and add an English accent to it and it makes me even more bored. The news anchors were talking about the radiation in Japan, Grace Kelly, and local London news. A hot debate began shortly after speaking of Grace Kelly. Apparently two gay men were kicked out of a bar in Soho, London, after kissing each other. A woman that said that she owned the property told them that they needed to leave because they were being “obscene!” The report later on stated that one of the men said it wasn’t like him and his boyfriend had been making out, it was merely a kiss on the lips. In my opinion, if you are in a bar, you will see lots of different things that you would not see on a normal basis, so I don’t think that they should have been kicked out and I figured that was what this heated argument was going to be about, but it was not. Strangely enough, the debate itself was short lived about the sexual orientation of the couple. Some people may find it offending that two people of the same sex were actually kissing, but in today’s society homosexuality seems to be easier to accept. The two women on the radio were arguing their beliefs about public displays of affection, they didn’t really care that it was two gay men who were actually kissing. One of the debaters was very conservative and did not think that a public display of affection was ever necessary. She thought it was disrespectful to others to do things like that in public, because you do not know how other people feel about public displays of affection (PDA). The other lady debater disagreed because she believed that some public display of affection is okay, such as a kiss on the lips, holding hands, or hugging was okay, but going further than that would be too much public affection. I completely agree that some public affection is okay, but after hearing the conservative lady talk about how her family was very religious and did not believe that public displays of affection were appropriate, I started to wonder how other people felt about it as well. I decided to do a little research and one lady brought up some very good points about PDA that I had not thought about. Her article actually made me smile and almost laugh. She said that perhaps some people hate PDA because they caught their boyfriend making out in a movie theater with another girl, or caught their daughter necking with a boy at the city park, or maybe they are just plain jealous because they do not have anyone to kiss in public with. Another article called Public Display of Affection Etiquette sums it up perfectly in my opinion. This piece states that when thinking about PDA, remember the ten rules:

1. Make it look good

2. Stop when it is uncomfortable (not for you, for others)

3. No Kissing (making out)

4. Don’t bite and lick

5. Don’t flash skin

6. Don’t use PDA to seduce someone else

7. Watch the age

8. Don’t touch someone else

9. Don’t stick your hands inside the clothing (that one I had to censor a little bit)

10.  Keep your reputation in mind!

These ten rules seem pretty acceptable to me. How do you feel about PDA?