The Science and Silliness of Kissing
Imagine if alien visitors asked you to explain the act of kissing. What would you say?
“A kiss is a lovely trick designed by nature to stop speech when words become superfluous.” – Ingrid Bergman
Think about it. If a spaceship full of aliens landed on earth to observe human behavior, how on earth would we explain the act of kissing? One person touches another person with their lips. Not, of course, lips to lips alone. Lips to cheek, lips to neck, lips to – well, just about any other body part can be considered. Imagine the polite but nevertheless obvious squirming with embarrassment that could be involved on either or both sides of the species divide.
“Kissing is a means of getting two people so close together that they can’t see anything wrong with each other.” – Rene Yasenek
An immediate question might be what is the act for? The reply could constitute the making of a list that even the most avid list-seeker on the internet might find overlong. Tongue nevertheless in cheek, most people would associate kissing with love and sexual desire and the aliens would probably accept this as part of our self-evidently bizarre mating habits. When this basic question is elaborated on, however, to include greeting, respect, sympathy, luck giving, affection and, most puzzlingly, false empathy then who would blame our visitors from outer space for turning tail and leaving this planet in a huff?
“I am in favor of preserving the French habit of kissing ladies’ hands – after all, one must start somewhere.” – Sacha Guitry
The origins of the word are old enough – the Old English language gifted the world the word kiss from their own – ‘cyssan’. Origins of the word aside, the reason for this most simple yet complex act to exist is still perplexing philematologists (those who study kissing). They cannot decide whether or not kissing is a learned behavior or if it is instinctive.
“A kiss is something you cannot give without taking and cannot take without giving” – Author Unknown
Many believe that it is related to grooming and this can be seen between different species on the planet. Due to the willingness of people to anthropomorphize animals and gleefully spread photos of these occurrences on the internet (guilty as charged) then it easy to fall in to this potential trap. It is just as likely that kissing evolved from mothers chewing food for their infants and then passing it from mouth to mouth. So, perhaps the act of kissing does not have a sexual origin at all.
“I wasn’t kissing her, I was whispering in her mouth.” – Chico Marx
Kissing proper involves the body doing quite a lot of work. Thirty four of the face’s muscles are used in the act as well as a whole host of the body’s postural muscles. The most important of these is your sphincter muscle. Your posture may have just changed when you read the last sentence but allow yourself a second. The body has over forty sphincter muscles and the orbicularis oris muscle (known to friends as the kissing muscle), consisting of lots of fibers around the hole that is your mouth all of which have varying directions. If you play a brass instrument you orbicularis oris will be particularly well developed.
“Kiss me and you will see how important I am.” – Sylvia Plath
Let’s add, for good measure, the tongue. When used in the act, kissing becomes French Kissing, or to use the more basic UK slang available to us, it becomes a damn good snog. This is where the tongue of one or both participants enters the mouth of the other. (The aliens are now, of course, way past Jupiter, leaving us to ramble on our own). Not to encourage teenagers in this act, many evolutionary biologists believe that there is a real function here.
“The first kiss I had was the most disgusting thing in my life. The girl injected about a pound of saliva, into my mouth, and when I walked away I had to spit it all out.” – Leonardo DiCaprio
The object of the exercise – as much as prolonged and intense sucking face needs an excuse other than the obvious – is to check out the potential partner’s immune system through the saliva. It could also be used to avoid breeding with a relative.
Quite how this is done by the body on an instinctive level remains a mystery but many people have been put off further bodily exploration and penetration by a French kiss with another for reasons upon which they cannot quite put their finger. No need, it seems when the tongue has done it for you.
“Kiss and make up–but too much makeup has ruined many a kiss.” Mae West
Of course the kiss is not always a prelude to getting ‘down on it’. Kisses are mostly used to express affection between people quite often to say hello or goodbye. More often than not the lips will just about touch the cheek of the recipient or sometimes no contact at all will be made. The emergence of the air kiss, a pretence of the act, accompanied by ‘mwah’ as an exhortation (with or without exclamation marks depending on the relationship) could perhaps be an evolution of the act. Or, it could simply be an expression of desire – but the desire to keep one’s (overdone) makeup intact.
“People who throw kisses are hopelessly lazy.” – Bob Hope
The most likely root of the air kiss is the blown or thrown kiss, which is often done to audiences but can be done between just two people where the physical distance between the two prohibits the act itself. Sexuality can be removed from the act altogether when the act of kissing is used to display sympathy or reconciliation with others. It can also be used to offer luck or to celebrate success without any sexual intent whatsoever. Same sex kissing between men who are heterosexual is quite common in many countries.
“I married the first man I ever kissed. When I tell this to my children they just about throw up.” – Barbara Bush
The kiss is like an iceberg. This article could be seen as the top ten percent peeking above the water. With so much more left to say – and with the aliens just having pushed the warp drive button – as they pass by Pluto (saddest of ex-planets) – perhaps a follow up article will be in order.
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User Comments
Glynis Smy
On April 4, 2009 at 6:40 am
What a fun article!
nobert soloria bermosa
On April 4, 2009 at 7:33 am
interesting article,i enjoyed this
nutuba
On April 4, 2009 at 7:51 am
Indeed this is a fun article!
JK Kristie
On April 4, 2009 at 7:58 am
Sweet…
John McDonnell
On April 4, 2009 at 8:14 am
Fun article, RJ! And I never knew there was a fancy word for people who study kissing. Sounds like a great job!
Christine Ramsay
On April 4, 2009 at 9:12 am
A very in depth article about the art of kissing. So well written. I had no idea so much was involved.
Christine
Evelyn Moore
On April 4, 2009 at 9:29 am
Very interesting and as you say there is so much to consider with this. Here in France very young children are taught to present themselves to visiting adults to be kissed, once on each side of the face. I used to panic (especially in winter) when meeting people as I was convinced I would catch endless colds with all the kissing. It turns out that you can catch more bugs from shaking hands! The trick here is to watch out for any stray Dutchman – as he will always kiss yoy three times and the third kiss always shocks!
Juancav
On April 4, 2009 at 9:57 am
Shredded and beautiful ode to kiss.
stephencardiff
On April 4, 2009 at 11:21 am
I loved the opening paragraph very good way of explaining it the rest of the article was just as good the pictures were a great choice…
As usual RJ a great article all round I enjoyed reading this
Liane Schmidt
On April 4, 2009 at 1:24 pm
Love it!! The quotes are wonderful – - the pictures & commentary as well!
Blessings.
Sincerely,
-Liane Schmidt.
Sam Down
On April 4, 2009 at 2:57 pm
Lovely idea to write an article about. Love the quotes and the pictures as well as the whole story!
Dee Gold
On April 4, 2009 at 3:36 pm
wonderfui title, pictures and article.
dee
On April 4, 2009 at 3:37 pm
sorry for the typo,that’s supposed to be wonderful
Juhls
On April 4, 2009 at 3:58 pm
Cool! Great article.
Ruby Hawk
On April 4, 2009 at 5:48 pm
Isn’t it wonderful, you never get too old to enjoy a sweet loving kiss. I love the picture of the sailor coming home from WW11 kissing the nurse. Most people will never know the excitement of that day.
clay hurtubise
On April 4, 2009 at 5:49 pm
Fun piece. Guess we could either kiss the Aliens, play music from the band KISS, or tell the Aliens to kiss off!
Thanks,
clay
RJ Chamberlain
On April 4, 2009 at 6:30 pm
Enjoyed this one R J. A unique idea.
Rj
Humming Buzz
On April 4, 2009 at 7:00 pm
I love this!
Fantastic article- so sweet. And I love the quote by Sacha Guitry.
Lost in Arizona
On April 4, 2009 at 10:02 pm
A kiss is what I do when I’ve had enough of my husband’s conversation… tee-hee..
Betty Carew
On April 5, 2009 at 7:45 am
Excellent article and very creative RJ
chigozie
On April 5, 2009 at 11:09 am
that is a great easy life and love.but grab more ways of remaining in love ,love to the end, kiss and love spouse life at http://www.loversworldbest.blogspot.com
Karen Gross
On April 5, 2009 at 11:49 am
Great article! You’ve done an excellent job of finding images that illustrate the text , rather than just text to illustrate the images. Loved it!
Jelle
On April 5, 2009 at 12:47 pm
This part is real good, never realised how weird is actually was. Well im just at the beginning of my life, so i will soon enough find out i think. It was even fun watching the pictures with the text. maybe i should use that too.
ML Sheldon
On April 5, 2009 at 8:24 pm
Sometimes I think about the act of kissing… good article to add to my thoughts!
Nadyn
On April 5, 2009 at 8:35 pm
Awesome article!!
I realy enjoyed it
Never really thought about what kissing really is and it is very complex to explain.
Love the quotes.
A very fun read
Kimberly Moore
On April 5, 2009 at 8:44 pm
They might think we are trying to eat one another..lol!!
desertsister
On April 6, 2009 at 8:57 am
Really cool article…enjoyed it!
Joan
On April 6, 2009 at 10:52 pm
This is an excellent article. The pictures help make it great!
CutestPrincess
On April 7, 2009 at 1:03 am
that was really breathtaking and true to life. i really enjoyed this article a lot. excellent.
Lauren Axelrod
On April 7, 2009 at 5:40 pm
This is very sweet. I would have never thought to think of it this way. lol
Nicko
On April 7, 2009 at 11:59 pm
Kiss..wow.. interesting
jp
On April 8, 2009 at 1:05 pm
very interesting aricle, good research and very creative kudos
MichaelArruda
On April 9, 2009 at 11:51 am
Great work… I enjoyed reading.
iamrulan
On April 16, 2009 at 6:34 pm
Very nice! What a wise man you are.
B Nelson
On April 17, 2009 at 8:30 pm
seriously.. what can one say on this? wow.
Mark Gordon Brown
On April 17, 2009 at 8:42 pm
If Aliens asked me to explain to them about kissing, I would have to say “Which show is better Star Trek or Star Wars?”
Resounding Glass
On April 18, 2009 at 2:20 am
Excellent article. I’ve never really thought about kissing this much or this in depth. You did a great job combining factual information about kissing, the story about explaining it to aliens, pictures and quotes which made it really enjoyable.
I have featured this on my blog. Hope that’s ok.
http://developingwriters.blogspot.com/2009/04/science-and-silliness-of-kissing.html
Thanks,
-Resounding Glass
ShelliLynn
On May 1, 2009 at 12:25 am
My favorite pass time.
Great article!
Rookie Expert
On May 3, 2009 at 6:37 am
This article is full of love. I love the explaining the act of kissing to alien’s idea. Just kiss one, they’ll know. Eewww!!
lillyrose
On September 4, 2009 at 11:00 am
That was a brilliant read! I loved that and would ‘kiss’ you if you were here! lots of clever research, quotes and pictures. Fantastic.
“Mmwaarrh” (sorry nearest I could get)
how do you put the pics on?
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