Megan Fox and Machine Gun Kelly touching tongues on the red carpet. Travis Barker and Kourtney Kardashian Barker taking any opportunity to make out in front of cameras, family members, random passers and, in one rather uncomfortable Keeping up with the Kardashians scene, their estate agent. Pete Davidson and Chase Sui Wonders sitting in each other’s laps while engaging in what feels like an eternal lip-lock in Hawaii.
At first, we thought these very public displays of affection was a fad, only reserved for ostensibly OTT couples. That was until the fiercely private and reputable king of keeping things low-key, Harry Styles, was caught in some bordeline cringe PDA of his own, with none other than author, podcaster and supermodel Emily Ratajkowski. There was hand-holding, some questionable dancing in the street, face grabbing, face eating and an overwhelming aura of three tequilas-deep-ness to the whole endeavour.
Harry Styles and Emily Ratajkowski spotted kissing in Tokyo. https://t.co/bQExEUnbRI
— Pop Crave (@PopCrave) March 26, 2023
Harry and EmRata aren’t alone in their candid street snogging. A couple of weeks ago the ultra-paparazzi-aware Kendall Jenner was captured kissing her new squeeze Bad Bunny as the two parted ways following a double date with Hailey and Justin Bieber. Not only that, but Harry is also kept in good company by his former bandmate Zayn Malik, with the singer rumoured to have been spotted kissing Selena Gomez on a date in New York last week.
That’s… a lot of public passion.
Last month, we posited the theory that we’re entering a new era of oversharing, with celebs everywhere tearing down their traditional boundaries of privacy, taking control of their own relationship narratives so they can love publicly, wild with abandon. But now it’s starting to feel like less of a step forward and more like a form of teenage-style rebellion.
Normally, video evidence of a Harry Styles kiss would send the internet into meltdown for days. Weeks, even. But this kiss hasn’t landed quite as well as you’d expect. Primarily thanks to its sloppy, sixth-form party-esque nature. Objectively harsh commentary under the video, posted by celebrity news Twitter account Pop Crave (typically a pro-Styles audience), include “Delete this”, “Feel like I shouldn’t be seeing this”, and “If you’re gonna kiss in public at least make it good.”
This reaction isn’t entirely new, of course — reminiscent even of previous public feedback garnered by aforementioned couples (Megan Fox and MGK, Kravis et al). But this is different, because this is about Styles: the perennially relevant, unquestionably cool, so-called “world’s most handsome man”, shrouded in mystique. Could Styles’ PDA be the thing to break his spell? Should celebrity couples cast aside the hard launch? Embrace the more adult ‘there’s a time-and-a-place’ model of getting off with your significant other?
No, says pop culture commentator Harrison Brocklehurst. “I think it’s a fun era and celebrities are allowed to act cringe, and messy, and neck people in public if they want because that’s how people act in real life,” he says. “My expectations of celebrities to not act like that are no different to my expectations of anyone else.
“It makes celebrities more human and relatable, but I don’t think Harry Styles really has any interest in trying to be closer to earth right now, and I personally think the intensity of his fandom and the scrutiny with which they analyse his personal life pushes him further away.” In other words, we may witness Styles try to claw back a sense of privacy at some point (he was rarely pictured with his ex, Olivia Wilde, in the nearly two years of dating). Kendall Jenner and Bad Bunny have already tried to claw it back — only yesterday were they pictured hiding their faces while leaving a West Hollywood club together.
Perhaps our celeb faves are time-travelling to teenagedom for a spell. A life stage, as anyone who has experienced it would agree, which is both a wildy fun roller coaster, as well as intensely vulnerable. A period of trial and, sometimes, error. Hormones raging. The key difference is, in the age of social media, there’s millions more eyes watching your next move.
