St Valentine’s Day is the day of chocolates, roses and romance – and kisses.
But for all those public figures out there planning to make their affection public, beware, because there is no human gesture that is as telling, or as controversial, or betrays the reality at the heart of a relationship, as a kiss.
Don’t believe us? Then read our guide to FIVE iconic kisses that hit the headlines for various reasons – and have even changed the world.
A Room with a View: George Emerson and Lucy Honeychurch, 1985
When Merchant Ivory released A Room with a View back in the 1980s, lots of girls of around my age were totally swept up in the romance of it all, writes Lucy Stephens.
Listen, it’s a sunny film. No-one in it seems to have many problems in their lives. There are lots of women wearing white dresses which never seem to get dirty or ruffled.
The central romantic scene is that in which George Emerson – the dashing, floppy-haired young man who believes in passion over decorum – rushes across a field in Italy to gather up Lucy Honeychurch in his arms and kiss her. She has no say in the matter.
There is some very romantic opera singing in the background and every time I watch it I think how funny it would be if the camera panned out and we could see the singer crouching in the grass somewhere.
But I digress.
Back when I and my friends used to watch the film on video nights, we thought this was possibly the most romantic thing ever. We may even have planned trips to Italy ourselves in the hopes something similar could happen to us.
Interestingly, in the period in which the film – and EM Forster’s novel – is set, George’s actions in kissing Lucy without asking are to be deeply disapproved of. Indeed, Lucy herself says she has been shown a lack of respect.
But EM Forster and the film makers’ clear intention is that anyone with an ounce of human feeling will be fully on the side of George, the spontaneous kiss, and Lucy’s eventual reciprocal feelings herself.
When I watched the film again with my own daughters, quite recently, their reaction to that part of the film was very telling.
“Consent?” said one. “He didn’t ask!”
It’s interesting how times change, but also how they can sometimes come full circle.
There is another cringeworthy scene in the film in which a man – Cecil Vyse – asks Lucy if he may kiss her.
The result is an embarrassing fumble of a completely non-romantic moment made worse, as these things often are, by the addition of one party wearing a fiddly little pair of spectacles. You’re meant to feel it pales in comparison with the scene in the field.
Yet today’s generation of young people seem more in tune with Edwardian values than EM Forster himself – for very different reasons, but still closely connected with the idea of respect, and what can, and cannot, be taken without asking.
It all goes to show that a kiss is never really just a kiss.
READ MORE: BLOG: Do you adore the love locks or think there’s a better way of expressing your love?
Melania and Donald Trump, the US presidential inauguration, 2025
I once wore a large hat to a wedding under the misapprehension that I looked like Andie MacDowell in a scene from Four Weddings and a Funeral, writes Sarah Newton.
It was the only time I’ve worn a hat (other than the woolly variety) because I soon discovered that not only did it give me hat hair for the rest of the day, but when it came to the line up, I couldn’t give the happy couple celebratory kisses on their cheeks because the brim of my hat kept bouncing off their foreheads.
I mention this only because it seems unlikely that Melania Trump would fall into the same trap of unexpectedly wearing a hat that made kissing in public completely out of the question.
Melania knew exactly what she was doing when she dressed for her husband’s presidential inauguration last month.
It was not just any hat. It was a large, perfectly structured, firmly placed hat. A hat that made a presidential kiss on the lips an aerodynamic impossibility.
Coincidence? I think not. That hat had a mission – a kiss-blocking, forehead-deflecting, PDA-preventing mission. And it succeeded.
The best Donald could manage was an awkward air kiss that was as frosty as the smile Melania plastered on for the cameras – brief, forced and gone the second no one was looking.
It doesn’t take a genius to imagine why Melania didn’t want to lock lips with her husband. Perhaps kissing wasn’t covered in the pre-nup? Or maybe she didn’t want his peculiar orange fake-tan to transfer onto her perfectly made-up cheek? Or maybe he actually makes her skin crawl?
Either way, the moral of the story is clear. Never underestimate the power of a well-placed hat. And if you ever find yourself in a situation where a kiss is undesirable – take a page from Melania’s book.
A sturdy brim can save the day, even if it does make you look a bit like an air hostess.
Beth and Margaret kiss, Brookside, Channel 4, 1994
For anyone under 30 I’m going to have to paint the scene to help explain why I think this one kiss is so important, writes Kirsty Green.
It was 1994 and, at the time schools were not allowed to ‘promote’ homosexuality in schools.
Meanwhile, Channel 4 soap opera Brookside was carefully developing an onscreen relationship between characters Beth Jordache (Anna Friel) and Margaret Clemence (Nicola Stephenson).
Then, on prime-time TV they spelled out that relationship when the characters shared a kiss.
Now, thankfully, this would not even generate one comment or raised eyebrow.
But this was 31years ago and that was the first lesbian kiss to be broadcast before the 9pm watershed.
Gay men got their first soap kiss in EastEnders, pre-watershed, five years earlier.
Other lesbian kisses had been shown on TV before, even 20 years prior, but never before the 9pm watershed. That small difference had a big impact – it made a lesbian kiss mainstream.
While Anna Friel became a lesbian icon over night, the positive impact on society’s perceptions was not as instant. Indeed, the scene was cut from the daytime weekly omnibus screening and generated numerous complaints to the show.
But its cultural impact was nevertheless huge and is still seen as a ground-breaking moment in the history of the British television industry and a symbol for LGBTQ+ progress.
That point was underlined in 2012 when the kiss was used as part of the London 2012 Olympic opening ceremony which was streamed in countries where homosexuality is still illegal.
It was a symbol of both how far the UK had come but the work still to be done for LGBTQ+ rights across the globe.
Luis Rubiales and Jenni Hermoso, Sydney, 2023
If you don’t believe a gesture as innocuous as a kiss can change a country – if not the world – then you haven’t been paying attention to the infamous Luis Rubiales/Jenni Hermoso World Cup kiss, writes Simon Burch.
No, it’s not a kiss we’d associate with flowers and chocolates. It’s not a peck on the cheek, nor a chaste, shy brushing of lips we’d associate of two young lovers finding their way.
This was instead what looked like a power kiss, bestowed on a World Cup-winning female football player by the head of her country’s FA, on the winner’s dais as the ticker tape rained down, his hands cupping her face and planting his lips fully and squarely on hers in front of thousands of spectators and millions of people watching at home.
To say the kiss caused uproar in Spain (and elsewhere) is a huge understatement. In the days that followed, it led to politicians calling for him to step down, condemnation from across football and even a message of strong disapproval from the United Nations.
As with all of these kisses, what some might see as a simple human gesture shared between two public figures, quickly became symbolic of something more profound.
While Rubiales claimed the kiss was just a kiss – a passionate spur of the moment thing that he says was consensual – Hermoso described it as an unwanted violation, which his millions of detractors decoded as another wearying example of Spanish systemic machismo flexing its power over women.
Their case is also strengthened by the Spanish team’s unhappiness at the way they had been treated by their male-dominated FA, which had led to 15 players refusing to play in the World Cup. Was Rubiales re-exerting his authority?
Rubiales stuck to his line for weeks while people continued to call for him to resign, which he eventually did.
Then – in stark contrast to the days when it may well have been brushed off and downplayed without sanction – the action led to him appearing in court facing a sexual assault charge and, according to the prosecutors, a possible jail sentence of a year.
The court proceedings are still ongoing – the case is expected to end next week – but regardless the outcome, it is tempting to conclude that women’s sport in Spain, if not the whole society, will never be the same again. And all because of a single kiss.
Lady and The Tramp, Disney, 1955
It would be churlish to end on a kiss that is anything but Valentine’s Day-ish and so we conclude with the famous spaghetti kiss from Lady and the Tramp, writes Simon Burch.
No, it didn’t create a scandal, it didn’t change society and it certainly didn’t divide a nation.
Perhaps it’s a sign of the times that the one famous kiss that everyone has only ever taken at face value and which has never become taboo with the passing of the years, is shared by a pair of cartoon dogs.
Certainly, no-one accuses Lady of faking it, nor do they suspect Tramp of having deliberately planting the spaghetti strand in front of Lady and then innocently taking hold of the other so that they will meet in the middle.
There wasn’t a need for an intimacy co-ordinator on set, nor questions that the director made demands that were beyond the pale for either actor involved.
It is forever what it seemed at the time – a total, charming, romantic, canine, accident.
In fact the only controversy about the clip is that, according to legend, Walt Disney wanted to edit it out of the film because he thought a sequence involving two dogs eating spaghetti couldn’t be depicted gracefully, and wouldn’t fit the feel of the film.
Like, what does Walt Disney know about cartoons, anyway? But happily, he was persuaded otherwise, and the scene not only stayed, it became the stand-out moment in the whole film and has been repeatedly referenced by humans and their dogs ever since – without any fear whatsoever of a cultural backlash.
