I love love. From physical touch to gift giving and words of affirmation, all the forms of love language are ones that I speak fluently — and that love is not reserved for just a romantic partner.
I genuinely believe there is no better feeling than loving someone. When my niece reaches for me to pick her up, when I see my best friend for the first time during break or when my cat sleeps next to me on my pillow — moments like these warm my heart, which is why it’s so important to me to make the people in my life feel loved.
It’s also why I found it strange when the media started criticizing how different celebrities showed affection to their loved ones. Consider when Tom Brady kissed his 11-year-old son on the lips and the internet went absolutely insane.
I was raised in a family where, until I hit puberty, my parents, sister, cousins and aunts would all greet me with a quick kiss on my lips. I never found it weird, nor was the transition to no longer doing it awkward. As I got older, I realized that was no longer my preferred way to express my love toward them and that change was just as natural and valid as the kisses had been.
There’s an obvious, unspoken difference between a parent kissing their kid and kissing their adult daughter. It would be strange if it continued unchanged into my adulthood, just as strange if my parents still tucked me in or cut my food for me. Those gestures belong to a specific, cherished chapter. Their natural retirement is a sign of growth, not a condemnation of the past.
Kissing is a way to show affection and it does not need to be romantic. The appropriateness of any gesture depends entirely on its nature and the relationship. There’s a clear, commonsense difference between a chaste familial kiss and an intimate romantic one. That is Brady’s son, and if that is how they are both comfortable expressing affection, it is nobody else’s place to say anything about it.
Then we have “Wicked” stars Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande. To the people who berate and mock them online, have you never had a best friend before? So what if they’re touchy with each other? Feeling uncomfortable watching a genuine bond says more about the viewer’s limitations than about their affection.
It’s well known that acting roles like these forge an unparalleled bond, a shared experience that, frankly, no one outside of could fully understand. The original Broadway stars of “Wicked,” Idina Menzel and Kristin Chenoweth, shared a kiss at a recent performance, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. If anything, I find it beautiful and admirable that these women were able to form such strong connections with each other.
The understanding that love changes form throughout life extends just as naturally to the family we choose. My friends and I have built our own dialect for affection, and those who are more intimate are often criticized for it. I grew up with friends very similar to me. We cuddle because physical closeness comes naturally to us, casual touches are our norm and sometimes we share a peck. I also have friends that I am just as close with, who I don’t hug and would never even think to curl up next to them on the couch, and that is just as normal.
Yet this comfortable friendship dynamic is often met with scrutiny. It hurts when I post a picture kissing one of my girl friends’ cheeks and people think it’s appropriate to question my sexuality. Or I walk linking arms with my guy friend and it’s immediately assumed we’re something more. Context is everything, and without it, there is no need to broadcast your assumptions about someone else’s life.
This constant suspicion does more than just annoy or embarrass. It actively shrinks the space we have for platonic and familial love. It tells people that deep friendship shouldn’t feel vulnerable. It tells women that affection is always a precursor to romance. It makes us second-guess simple comforts and withhold support for fear of being misread.
Beyond individuals, the policing of platonic and familial affection serves systems much larger. For instance, men’s emotional restraint benefits a culture that equates masculinity with stoicism and control, leaving men isolated while reinforcing the idea that emotional labor belongs elsewhere, most often to women.
Women’s closeness, meanwhile, is rarely allowed to exist on its own terms. It is either sexualized for consumption or dismissed as performative, as if intimacy between women must be staged to be believable.
But when affection crosses gender lines, it is scrutinized most harshly, because male–female closeness threatens the assumption that romance is inevitable and exclusive. If affection between men and women could simply exist without narrative, it would undermine the belief that desire governs every interaction. Scrutinizing these boundaries keeps relationships legible, predictable and easily categorized — but at the cost of human connection.
We all lose when the vocabulary of love is made so small. To dismiss a relationship as “weird” simply because its expressions of love are foreign to you is shameful. It reveals a lack of understanding in your heart, the understanding that people can express love however they see fit.
Suhiliah Lall ‘25 graduated with a degree in cinema.
Views expressed in the opinions pages represent the opinions of the columnists. The only piece that represents the view of the Pipe Dream Editorial Board is the Staff Editorial.