Tips for Girls

How to Kiss

For years, before I could do the real thing with real boys, I practiced kissing the bathroom mirror. I can still remember my mother screeching, "Martha, don't go near that mirror. The cleaning girl was here today."

But how else was I going to figure out how the whole thing worked? And I knew I'd need lots of practice if I was going to do what they seemed to do so effortlessly in films. It was the nose thing that drove me nuts. Where did you put it? Did you breathe out or not? Movies made me aware of how silly the whole thing could look if you didn't figure out where your nose was supposed to be. Just think of Jack Nicholson and Faye Dunaway in Chinatown.

"I learned everything I needed to know about kissing from the movies," said Val, "until a guy stuck his tongue in my mouth and I almost gagged. They never did that in the movies! I thought the whole deal was that you pushed your faces together as close as possible--I even imagined that your teeth would grind against his--and then you just stayed that way. Nowhere was the tongue ever implied."

"Gone With the Wind--now that was a kiss," said Lizzie. "And you didn't see them slobbering all over each other. I heard somewhere that later on, Vivien Leigh said that Clark Gable had bad breath, but that still doesn't ruin it for me. It was so wonderful."

My sister, Helene, remembers another one. "I almost died when Paul Newman kissed Eva Marie Saint in Exodus. They were on that mountain-top, and I can remember feeling how intense it was. I very much wanted a boy--any boy!--to kiss me that way." Michelle agreed: "That kiss turned me into a Zionist."

One of my young friends pointed out that the minute she began to draw more than mere practical tips from screen kisses, she ran smack into a dilemma: "I noticed that a kiss is never just a kiss anymore. It's like, you kiss, you fuck. It seems to go hand in hand. One minute they're smooching, the next they're putting on their bathrobes, postcoital. Don't you ever get to just kiss in real life, and not worry that intercourse is the next step?" In a word, no.

How to Get Boys

Some of us may have adored Gidget, the symbol of modern, wholesome young womanhood. But what the hell was she doing walking around in the bikini all the time, shaking her ass for all the world to see? In reality, Gidget was a nice girl cleverly disguised as a bimbo, which is why she managed to have fun. (Actually being a bimbo is not as much fun.)

"Remember Grease?" asked Lisa, age 25. "I loved that movie, because of how Olivia Newton-John went from good girl to bad girl by the end of the film. I learned from that movie that showing off your body is very key in relationships with men. What you think will happen is that John Travolta will become good because he wants her so bad, and he thinks she's sweet and virginal. But in the end, she dresses like a slut and he loves her even more."

Movies made it perfectly clear that being too good was usually an unrewarding activity. Remember Maria in West Side Story! She was good and wore a white dress to the dance. "I was a good girl looking for a good boy," said Michelle. "West Side Story taught me that, yes, there's a tall, dark, sensitive man out there for you, and he'll die before you can marry him."

I decided long ago that being bad may get you in trouble, but at least you'll have good stories to tell. Guys will like you and girls will remember you. Who do we remember from Desperately Seeking Susan: the decent Rosanna Arquette, who spent all her time looking for a guy who was looking for another girl, or the sexy and contemptible Madonna, who cheated and stole, used all her friends, and dried her armpits in the bus terminal? No contest.

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