The last thing I want is a hug
Jim Shelley
Monday August 14, 2006
The Guardian
The pressure on young British men to hug one another - their friends, their brothers, even, for God's sake, their fathers - has never been greater. Watching Big Brother or Love Island at the moment, you realise the trend has reached epidemic proportions. Not an incident or even a conversation goes by that doesn't result in, say, Callum Best and Chris Brosnan embracing like brothers who haven't seen each other for decades.
On Love Island, pathetic pipsqueaks Lee Otway and Paul Danan frequently resolved their heated disputes over voluptuous Playboy bunny Colleen Shannon (!) not only by hugging, but by kissing each other's stubbled cheeks (on their faces, that is), and muttering various meaningless assurances such as, "I love you man," or "I think you're wicked." Anyone would think they had survived a tour of duty in Iraq, not "endured" some overblown publicity stunt on a luxury resort in Fiji.
On Big Brother, meanwhile, the hugs are saved for eviction night as lads like Mikey and Pete cuddle the very people that they nominated/stabbed in the back in the first place. Every Friday, they indulge in an orgy of hugs, tears and kisses as one of their number steps out to a world of appearances in Heat magazine and Richard and Judy while the others behave as if they were being sent to the electric chair.
I'd say I don't know who these soft-hearted "New Men" think they are, but I do. The recent trend for men to hug their fathers for instance is, quite simply, an imitation of Americans. Suddenly, repressed English males you've known for years are patting their dads ostentatiously on the back as if they were greeting Tony Soprano.
The problem, as David Bowie said, is that this is not America. By hugging each other every time they meet, young British males like Otway are merely aping the cool young Americans they see in hip-hop videos or frat-pack movies. As the fraudulent gesture of the American wannabe, the male hug is basically the emotional equivalent of the baseball cap worn backwards.
This sort of random hugging - serial hugging - looks like the gesture of someone who is "in touch with his feelings". In most cases, it's totally bogus. Or rather, it's the act of someone uneasy about their relationship with their dad - which is, after all, one of the very mainstays of English society. They have undermined the currency of a real (British) hug - one that should be saved for special occasions (like, say, funerals). Hugs are becoming the nervous tics of a nation of young British men who can't be their old, gloriously repressed selves.
Obviously, it's OK to hug another man you haven't seen for several years. (The Law Against Hugging could fix it at a period of, say, 10 years. Or 20.) Personally, though, I would no rather hug my mates than kiss them on the lips. They know how important they are to me without this sort of facile gesture.
I was in the US when Barbara Bush endorsed the "Hugs Are Better Than Drugs" campaign. Obviously, hugs aren't (quite) as harmful as heroin. But it's time to leave the hugging to the Americans and Just Say No.
) I know often seem to hurtle with frightening speed from one long term relationship to another, not pausing for breath inbetween - I don't know many single divorcees at all, or they have children living with them.
