“Since the invention of the kiss there have been five kisses that were rated the most passionate, the most pure. This one left them all behind. The End.” — The Princess Bride
Kisses are powerful things, ya'll.
In the Disney version of fairy tales, it is a kiss that wakes the princess.
Breaks the spell.
Turns the frog into a Prince.
I'm not a big fan of that narrative. (I'm more partial to Mulan; steal a sword, run away to join the army and kick some a$$? Sign me UP!) Personally, I have never felt the need to be rescued, repaired, or restored by a man.
Ravished? Yes. Redeemed? Naw, fam. TF am I, a coupon?
Although...there is one Disney kissing scene that I consider to be iconic, magical, sweet, and stirring; all things that a really good kiss should be.
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| *squeeeeee!* |
The real power in a really good kiss is that it does change you; even if it is just temporary. Kissing releases all kinds of luscious feel-good brain chemicals that boost your mood, reduces anxiety, encourages pair bonding, and even lowers your blood pressure.
Kissing lowers your cortisol levels, which decreases your stress and can even boost your self esteem.
Kissing is just one of the best, most fun things you can do with your clothes on.
Pro tip: it is a perfectly acceptable thing to kiss with your clothes off. In fact, I encourage it.
But I digress.
Romantic kissing isn't even a thing in some cultures, which I find odd. Like, they just never invented it? Before you get on my case about judging other cultures through the scratched and distorted lens of my white privilege, please shut up. What I mean is, that kissing is pretty fucking awesome and I feel like everyone on the planet - besides my teenage offspring - deserves to be kissed like this at least once in their lifetime.
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Or 250 times. I'm not tied to a number in regards to this matter,
besides the higher the better, obvs. |
With all due respect to the 10% of the world's population that doesn't kiss romantically but instead rubs arms or noses or slaps your hand over their face, um.... I forgot where I was going with that. Ya'll can carry on not locking lips, I guess. Have fun with that.
Kissing has a bunch of weird statistics attached to it, including the fact that the average person spends about 14 days of their life kissing. Frankly, I find that hard to believe. 14 DAYS??
THAT'S IT?!?!
What are you people doing with your time that you are only kissing a total of 2 weeks in an entire lifetime? Crossword puzzles??? Napping? Writing rambling and bizarre blogposts for your contingent of Russian bots??
Like, I know for a fact that in 1995 I kissed someone's entire face off his
head over the course of a weekend. Like,
I am fairly certain we didn’t eat, hydrate, or even talk. And there were several weekends that year.
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| 8 |
I think when my decrepit 84-year-old self finally dips out
of this particular level of “existence”, that I will have spent at least 6 months
of my life kissing. I mean, I have been
fairly conservative lately (more on that in a mo), but I fully intend to be the
geriatric Jezebel of Shady Pines Retirement home.
14 days just seems a little low to me, guys. We should all do our part to bring that
number up, don’t you think?
Regarding conservative me...
The other day, as I was researching this post the not-fun
way -- Googling instead of actual kissing – I realized that I have kissed more boys
this calendar year during a global fucking pandemic with a disease that is
certain to kill me than I have in the last 3 years combined. Don’t all rush to judgement and expect me to
start wearing a scarlet H, though. Like
I said, I have been rather conservative for a few years so both of those
numbers can be counted on one hand. But
it was a weird thought all the same.
Like, who kisses more than one person in a year when an extremely communicable
disease that will end in certain death for oneself is raging through the
populace unchecked?
Me, ya’ll. Me.
Final fun fact about ‘frenching’. Kissing burns calories. Vigorous (can we just take a moment to
appreciate that word, ya’ll? I fucking
love it!) kissing can burn up to 2 calories per minute. This was very good information to come across
at this particular time in my life, because I really need to lose 10 pounds in
the next 2 weeks before the Epic Road Trip begins.
Sooooo, if my calculations – i.e., Google – are correct, I
need to spend 5.5 of the next 14 days kissing.
Vigorously.
I am not going to argue with this; science is real, yo.
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| Rhett Butler spittin' facts! |
