Health

It's International Kissing Day! Here Are Some Awkward Kisses. 

When the most awesome thing in life isn't.

by Lauren Sarner

According to the ever-reliable Twitter, today is International Kissing Day.

In honor of such a sacred holiday, we present you with the most awkward kisses in pop culture:

1. The Kissers: Harry Potter and Ginny Weasley in Harry Potter movies 6 & 7

Why it’s so terrible and awkward and terribly awkward: The actors progressed from child actors to not-quite child actors together over the course of this franchise, and shockingly, having a sibling-like relationship doesn’t translate well to passion on the screen. Each kiss looks like they’re barely preventing themselves from regurgitating. It’s really a toss-up between whether the kissing is more painful for them or us.

2. The Kissers: Sansa Stark and Petyr Baelish

Why it’s so terrible and awkward and terribly awkward: This one is deliberately icky, but no less painful. Sansa is an underage girl; Littlefinger is a middle-aged man. Also, he’s obsessed with her dead mother. And he’s Sansa’s uncle through marriage. That would also be creepy enough, but why stop there? He’s a sociopathic brothelmaster who spends most of his time scheming while dispassionately watching sexual acrobatics — sometimes through peepholes, because that’s how he rolls. Oh, and Sansa’s aunt was obsessed with him, and Sansa had to listen to them have sex. And she’s promised to her cousin, who is technically Littlefinger’s nephew. And he’s shorter than her, which isn’t an issue and rock on, tall women/short man couples, but it’s just another thing that makes it awkward, considering their ages. Also, he’s really, really into face-touching.

3. The Kissers: Cate Blanchett and A Very Young Looking Teenage Boy in Notes On A Scandal.

Why it’s so terrible and awkward and terribly awkward: He’s half her age, she’s his teacher, and she has a daughter the same age. Also, her husband is nearly twice her age, so her spouse is three times the age of her lover, which makes it extra weird. Also — not that this would make it okay — he’s not the most mature-looking teenage boy. He’s a scrawny, actual teenage-boy-looking teenage boy. There’s no shrinking from it. This is a visceral recoil.

4. The Kissers: Paul Rudd and His Accidental Date in I Love You, Man

Why it’s so terrible and awkward and terribly awkward: Paul Rudd’s character, Peter, has no guy friends and needs some men to be in his wedding, so he goes on a man-dating spree. Unfortunately, one of these dates confuses it for an actual date and kisses him at the end. It’s a scene that could have easily slid into an unfunny gay panic trope, but it instead managed to make it less about the kiss and more about Paul Rudd’s character being too damn polite. Plus, that extra little peck at the end just makes it.

5. The kissers: Christian Grey and Anastasia Steele in 50 Shades of Grey.

Why it’s so terrible and awkward and terribly awkward: This movie was advertised as the most scandalously hot sexiest sex movie that ever sexed. You’d think the actors having any chemistry whatsoever might be important, but nah. They notoriously had less than zero spark and interacted as if they were aliens who were trying to imitate human behavior. Each kiss showed roughly the same amount of sizzling sexual tension as someone being marched to their execution — which Jamie Dornan clearly realized was for his career.

For more on how to avoid terrible and awkward and terribly awkward kisses in your own life, see here. Every day is for better smooches than this lot.