Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee, of Mötley Crüe, may have split for good in 1998, but they have been responsible for an important cultural reset in 2021. First came news of a TV series, starring Lily James and Sebastian Stan, based on Pammy’s and Tommy’s turbulent relationship and infamous sex tape, which has sparked a wave of Pammy-inspired style – thin eyebrows included.
Most notable, though, has been the avalanche of new ‘Hot Girl/Alt Guy’ couples, as coined by Vice, in the mould of Tommy and Pammy’s rock’n’roll romance template. Flying the flag for this regenerated brand of power couple are Kourtney Kardashian and Blink 182’s Travis Barker, Megan Fox and singer Machine Gun Kelly, and actor Kat Dennings and lustrous-locked rocker Andrew WK.
These couples aren’t just linked by their love of tattoos in weird places, PVC trousers and box-fresh band T-shirts, but their penchant for quite aggressive PDAs – something that was incidentally also a favourite pastime of Pammy and Tommy.
Kourtney and Travis have come to define their new relationship with the kind of horny Instagram posts you’d expect from 18-year-olds, not two people in their forties. There was the ‘bikini ass grab’ shot (which earned Kourtney 5.6 million likes), the full-on snogging in a nightclub shot, the thumb-sucking video (yes, really); Kourtney even tattooed ‘I love you’ on Travis’s arm recently.
Meanwhile, Megan and MGK spent some time on the red carpet for the recent Billboard Music Awards in LA licking one another’s tongues, and he proudly wears a necklace that contains her blood (Angelina and Billy Bob would be proud). Megan, 35, recently said that her 31-year-old boyfriend is her twin flame, adding, ‘A twin flame is actually where a soul has ascended into a high enough level that it can be split into two different bodies at the same time. So we’re actually two halves of the same soul.’
Two Broke Girls star Kat and Andrew WK confirmed not just their engagement but, to many people, their entire relationship with an Instagram shot of them open-mouth kissing and showing off Kat’s diamond ring.
No one likes to be actually present for an extreme PDA, but can you really blame new couples for getting a bit overexcited? After a year of restrictions on not only meeting new people but touching them, perhaps, as we slowly move into a post-pandemic world, the formerly much-derided PDA will find a way into all of our lives.
But before you all get carried away, a word of warning from Timothée Chalamet, who was photographed with his tongue thrust down Lily Rose Depp’s throat on a yacht in 2019. Timmy admitted he was deathly embarrassed by the images, which went viral. ‘I went to bed thinking that was one of the best days of my life,’ he said. ‘I was on this boat all day with someone I really loved. And then waking up to all these pictures, and feeling embarrassed, and looking like a real knob? All pale?’ Power PDAs: proceed with caution.