By Alyssa Velazquez
Elm Columnist
PDA: an acronym for the term public display of affection.
PDA: the tell tale sign of a freshly established relationship, a thorn in a parents’ side, and the kryptonite of single women everywhere. It is an issue that is often fretted over and one that, if caught in a public setting, can dominate onlookers’ conversations for a half-an-hour.
Yet what is it about PDA that causes such pandemonium?
It is, after all, an iconic World War II photograph of an unacquainted nurse and sailor locking lips in the middle of Times Square that many critics call the most romantic kiss in history. The kiss: passionate, the couple: iconic, and the act: PDA.
If we, as women, are so willing to decorate our technological wallpapers, dorm rooms, and households with a snapshot of historic PDA, why then, are we so adverse to seeing it re-enacted in the present? Does PDA really stand for public display of affection to all women, or does it mean something else entirely: an unaddressed rule?
Being single for a longer than anticipated period of time can make many women, like myself, irritated by a single moment of PDA at any given time, resulting in a PDA PMS day. You see a kiss, hug or long embrace and automatically your thoughts turn into bile and you begin to spew tainted lectures on propriety, decorum, and respect, all the while trying to filter the self-incriminating ideas out of your head.
I, as a single female, have had many PDA PMS days. Beholding an affectionate couple results in an incriminating inner monologue after which I am left feeling worse than when I started. It wouldn’t be until I was in a country where displays of affection were forbidden that I would fully come to appreciate PDA.
I used to believe that a world without PDA was impossible. However idealistic for single women, I believed PDA to be a necessary evil in life, along with gynecologist appointments and bathing suit season.
Egypt on the other hand, still does not permit two-piece bikinis to be worn at the beach nor does it have a large field of gynecology practice, and most significantly, they continue to lawfully admonish public displays of affection.
In my residence hall boys and girls were housed in different quarters of the building, doors connecting hallways were dead bolted, and if a security guard entered upon the threshold of the female floor you would be instantaneously made aware of it by the loud cry, “man in the hall.”
Although the proclamation was spoken in English, I learned the cultural implication: do not come out of your rooms, close your doors, and do not exit the bathroom. All existing female activity was to be immediately stopped for fear of interaction with the opposite sex. In the beginning, this was bearable, and it wasn’t until my surroundings changed and conflicts began to escalate that I craved for PDA.
It was around this time that my love interest and I were beginning to get closer, yet our definition of “close” had to be redefined within the perimeters of Egyptian culture. Instead of hand holding we would, under the guise of watching the news, discreetly lean against each other.
Fist pounding as friends and sitting next to each other in large groups was the closest direct contact that we were able to get away within a sea of security guards. These forms of deceptive PDA that we were forced to contrive made me realize that it wasn’t the public affection aspect of a relationship that tended to rub individuals the wrong way, rather, the advertising.
By displaying affection a couple is announcing their relationship publically. When displaying affection they are advertising a product that we, as their target audience, cannot partake in nor buy: un-obtainable relationship commercialism.
That is the kryptonite of PDA for us women.
Up until the very end, my love interest and I respected the Egyptian culture. A farewell hug would be the closest we would ever come to “conventional” intimacy in Egypt.
Now that I am back in the States, I find myself advertising all the time. PDA and I have reached an understanding, for now. Depending on future experiences this may fade and the end result will be the occasional PDA PMS day.
In spite of those future days when people say “please don’t advertise,” I say “please display affection.” While I can’t buy it, I can at least continue to watch the product to remind myself what I’m banking on.