Public licking pushes social boundaries. When Bella Thorne and model Tana Mongeau documented themselves giving each other what looks like full on annual dental cleanings in October 2017, they were essentially challenging onlookers. “Go ahead, find us gross,” they seemed to say. “You’re a part of this now.”
Bella Hadid and The Weeknd have also documented their licking sessions on Instagram, and as much as that sentence may make you want to plunge your head into an industrial blender, the pics are closer to adorable than pornographic. Same with Tristan Thompson and Khloe Kardashian, a couple that is famous for many things, not including cuteness. But a September 2018 Instagram video, in which he serenades her, then gently licks her mouth and nose, is oddly tender.
Kim Kardashian, too, has habitually shared images of herself lightly touching her tongue to Kanye West’s face. In 2016, she went so far as to lick him on the red carpet at the Met Gala.
Aggressively cutesy face licking runs in other celebrity families, too. On a December 2018 ski trip, Joe Jonas posted a pic in which Sophie Turner licked his cheek. On the same trip, Priyanka Chopra shared a pic of herself squirming away from Nick Jonas’ tongue. Sometimes, we don’t want to put “family” and “licking” in the same sentence, but celebrities don’t always give us that freedom!
Hollywood’s most prolific celebrity licker is no doubt Miley Cyrus, whose career is littered with instances of her licking people, objects, and the air. After spending the greater part of her career with her tongue outside her mouth, she licked her then-husband Liam Hemsworth at the 2019 Met Gala. Weeks later, they separated.
To be fair, her behavior wasn’t random—she also tried to lick Liam on the Avengers: Endgame red carpet, and once tweeted that she was asked to leave the set of the movie Hotel Transylvania after “buying Liam a penis cake for his birthday and licking it.” Miley transcends other celebrities, entering her own category of people who have lost jobs over licking incidents.
Other couples who differ on public licking politics have remained in wedlock—Elizabeth Chambers lurched away from her husband Armie Hammer’s tongue on the red carpet at the AFI fest in October 2017. He may have been inspired by his own work, having licked Julia Roberts’ face in a scene in Mirror, Mirror in 2012. Hammer is a stalwart licker–just one month after his AFI lick-attempt, he didn’t appear to flinch when Robert Pattinson’s tongue approached his face.
