Why Didn’t Sandra Bullock Kiss Betty White Instead?

Photo courtesy of MTV

I don’t want to be the one to rain on Sandra Bullock’s parade – I too was beaming when I watched her stride on stage in that tiny, sparkly black dress at last night’s MTV Movie Awards, and was nodding in you-go-girl approval when she suggested that even though she was accepting the “Generation Award,” presumably for people who have been around a while, that she was “not going anywhere.”

Then things took an awkward turn. Betty White, Bradley Cooper and Scarlett Johansson set up an elaborately scripted moment that finally culminated in a liplock between Johansson and Bullock. It was cute – I guess – although the way Betty White was cracking wise on the fly (“honey, don’t ever wear that dress backward”), and the way Bullock was fawning over her (“I want your life. I’m serious, I want your life. I want your life”), it seems like it would have been much more appropriate – and truly much edgier – than having Bullock reassert her sexuality by smooching Johansson.

Everyone is always insisting on their love for Betty White, but I’m not sure they really want to see an octogenarian woman – though she jokes about sex almost exclusively – actually do anything sexual.

I’m also over the girl-on-girl kiss as a supposedly edgy gimmick. It’s been done to death – and yet somehow receives giddy headlines each time, while we continue to recoil at the same thing when it’s done by men. Have you seen even a fraction of stories about Russell Brand and Jonah Hill’s kiss from last night? No, because when two men kiss each other, we insist it’s not sexy and alluring the way it is between women.

No, when men get sexual with other men we file FCC complaints peppered with homophopic outrage – as in the case of Adam Lambert’s American Music Awards performance. The campaign to get the gay couple on ABC’s “Modern Family” to share a kiss is also evidence of people’s discomfort with seeing affection shared between two men. But I bet a lot of those same people were cheering on Britney and Madonna.