2021 will be forever remembered for milestones like the end of the Trump administration and the distribution of the COVID-19 vaccine. But this trip around the sun also brought us something else: celebrities kissing in public with reckless abandon.
Perhaps it was the wave of post-containment emotions; a categorical reaction to social distancing. Maybe after a year of rare public appearances, celebrities really, really wanted to remind people that they existed. Either way, the famous PDA machine has gone from holding hands and grabbing slats – maybe a bikini stroll on Cabo Beach? – licking each other on the red carpet, overlapping in the desert and chatting, as Megan Fox recently described it, “the kind of sex that would make Lucifer hold his rosary” for everyone to read. Things are back, including the super intense energy of blood in a vial of Angelina carrying Billy-Bob.
The celebrities of this cottage industry of 2021 were, of course, Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck, aka Bennifer 2.0, who reappeared and quickly embarked on a world tour of touch. They sailed the Riviera, successfully recreating Jack and Rose’s ‘I will never let go’ moment. Titanic and the old “Jenny from the Block” bottom caress. Ben and Jen made it official on Instagram in July, talking about Lopez’s 52nd birthday in a photo that seemed intimate (the photographer was J.Lo’s reference, Ana Carballosa), but was liked nearly 9 million times. times. The couple continued to kiss for the cameras on the red carpet in Venice and in masks at the Met Gala. It is the commitment.
If Bennifer were the legends, however, Kravis — Kourtney Kardashian and Travis Barker — were the newcomers who have made their way (literally?) Into the celebrity PDA game. Often in coordinating leather, they invited the world to do their makeup on a sofa backstage at SNL, kissed in front of the Eiffel Tower (IG caption: “Forever is not long enough”), and, most notably, entangled their scantily clad bodies in a photoshoot in the desert that some headlines have labeled “NSFW.” Kravis faced off against their friends, Machine Gun Kelly and Fox, whose signature red carpet move was to… touch their tongues. I can’t describe this romance better than Fox did by revealing their joint GQ cover on Instagram: “The story of two outcasts and crossover lovers caught in the throes of a scorching sun flare of romance.”
