Side Hugs: Friend or Foe?

Alright ladies and gentlemen introducing a new part of our blog. Every now and then we will have a featured blogger. Our first is none other than Charles C. Simpson, IV. Just a little inside on Charles his favorite artist is Meiko. If you feel like you are qualified to be a future featured blogger then submit 3 reasons to the Sass and I as to why you should be the next. Here you go..enjoy!

After years of dating, I finally had an epiphany. And, to be clear, upon having this epiphany, I did NOT run over to some girl’s house, hold up an iPod with tiny cube speakers, and blast Peter Gabriel’s “In Your Eyes” at her bedroom window. The restraining order won’t even let me get THAT close. Besides, Peter Gabriel is so 80s passé - much like the DeLorean and cutting coke on Molly Ringwall’s glass coffee table.



The epiphany is thus: I remind women of their long-lost conjoined twin. That’s the only possible explanation for all the side hugs I’ve been getting lately.



I first noticed the side hug in middle school, when dances were called “sock hops” and the Top 40 radio station in Mobile was flooded with dedications of Sophie Hawkins’s “Damn, I Wish I was Your Lover” and Billy Ray Cyrus’s “Achy Breaky Heart” to girls named Brandy, Candy, and Mandy. In 8th grade, all I knew about girls was that they liked really bad music. So, whenever they gave me side hugs at sock hops, I figured their arms were tired from holding the telephone to their ear while on hold with a radio station request line. After all, the DJ was going to take their dedication at any moment. And Josh really loves Boyz 2 Men.



But, I was deluding myself. The side hug isn’t the result of tired arms. No, she wasn’t spent from stringing up balloons in the gym all Friday afternoon. She’s a cheerleader, for God sakes! She’s got more than enough pep to muster up a two-armed effort. Just not for you. Irrespective of that, it’s cool. Patience! Stay in milk, drink your school, don’t do drugs, use a lot of Ax body spray, and wail on your pecs at the gym. Invariably, you’ll feel the doubly sweet two-limbed embrace; even in the most formal of social settings.



Except for the Ax body spray, I’ve adopted each of those proscriptions. And, yet, no improvement. The tango used to be a spectacle shared by two zestful souls. Now, it’s simply the mundane flurry and shuffle of feet a woman uses to position her torso to your side; as her one-armed embrace envelopes your neck and shoulder whilst dashing your hopes. Humanity has wiped Polio, dysentery, and Vanilla Ice from the face of the Earth; but the side hug still festers to this very day. And, it’s the hugging equivalent of asking “How are you doing?” without really giving much of a crap about, well, ‘how you are doing.’



Indeed, the one-armed man killed Dr. Richard Kimball’s wife. Concomitantly, the one-armed hug is killing women’s credibility as the sentient, sensitive sex. Your Fresca should be low on calories, not your body language.



Consider this piece of advice as “Driver’s Ed” for single women; except, it’s not coming from some crusty P.E. teacher in gym shorts. Ladies, when a guy comes in for the hug, keep your arms at 10 and 2. The hug is the most innocuous, yet warm, expression of comity out there. The most wonderful thing about an embrace is that it’s inherently comforting despite its simplicity, and it’s just another mechanism of giving that requires letting someone in. All the better if it’s cold outside and you have on a wool sweater.



I don’t blame feminism, Lifetime television, or even the 19th Amendment for the side hug. If Sally Ride can become the first female astronaut despite the ostesible handicap of having female genitalia, then a woman can give a man a two-armed hug during the day or night. For all of their power, hugs are neither a commitment instrument, nor a predicate to unbridled intimacy. I’ve never seen salacious hugging used in an advertisement for a “Girl’s Gone Wild” video. In the same vein, that guy who offered you eye contact, tethered to a smile, on the street isn’t necessarily a pervert. You will not see him the following week, sitting on a bar stool facing Stone Phillips, on “To Catch a Predator” while hoisting a plastic grocery bag of condoms, Mike’s Hard Lemonade, and Tootsie-Roll pops. Seriously. You can use both arms to hug a man without sending him into fits of sexual derangement.



Ladies, don’t take yourself, and your arms, so seriously.