Suddenly it's become fashionable for middle class girls to kiss each other. And, says TV reporter Penny Marshall who investigated the phenomenon, it has been created (surprise, surprise) by cynical,publicity-hungry celebrities...
Olivia and Lara had their first kiss at their friend Clara's 15th birthday party. That is, they first kissed each other then. They'd both kissed boys before, and they will do so again, because neither girl considers herself a lesbian. But after a couple of drinks, they thought it would be fun to see how it felt to kiss each other.
Both girls come from smart homes with professional parents, are well-spoken and attend a well-respected Inner London day school.
It started with a kiss: Madonna and Britney at the MTV Video Awards in 2003
Their close encounter occurred recently at a smart private house party, and was described to me while I was researching an investigation into teenage behaviour - during which this intriguing and disturbing trend came to light.
There's no doubt many people will be shocked at the prospect of such public sexual experimentation. But the fact is that it's becoming increasingly common for middle-class girls to flirt with a kind of faux lesbianism. The social trend has even sparked its own acronym - LUGs, or Lesbian Until Graduation.
As Clara's friend Nancy told me: 'I don't think they'll do it again. But it's really not that unusual for girls to kiss each other at private house parties now. It doesn't mean they are really lesbian - just flirty, relaxed and affectionate. There is no harm done, no harm meant.'
For previous generations, exhibiting any type of gay behaviour was certainly considered 'harm done'. Being teased for being 'lesbian' was one of the more cruel taunts that could be hurled at a teenage girl. But today we're witnessing the emergence of a growing number of young girls who are willing to experiment with their female friends.
Lipstick lesbian: Katy Perry, the American singer of I Kissed A Girl, insisted the track was based on a true incident
As usual, it's celebrities who are leading the way, with a plethora of lipstick lesbians being held up as zeitgeisty icons of cutting edge cool for young girls to copy. Young women like Peaches Geldof, actress Megan Fox and singer Lily Allen, who appear to be able to change their sexuality - or
pretend to change their sexuality - as often as they change their designer clothes.
For women such as those, it's just another layer to the mystique they try so hard to create around themselves. But for the teenage girls who are, at 15 or 16, in some ways precocious, in other ways they are deeply naive about what the fallout might be from kissing another girl in public.
Yes, they're vulnerable to intense social pressures to fit in with whatever is perceived to be fashionable. And yet few are mature enough to deal with the complicated sexual issues surrounding such behaviour. That's why this celebrity fad is so insidious.
It all started with Britney Spears and Madonna - a star well practised in using her sexuality to attract headlines - and the very public kiss they shared at the MTV Video Awards in 2003.
At the time, Britney said she didn't instigate the smooch: 'It was not my idea. No, Madonna threw it around a couple times in rehearsals .. . she just kinda said: "You know, do what you feel in the performance .. . just go with it and see what happens."'
What happened was a ratings bonanza, and a lurid public fascination with that moment which continues to this day. Their kiss has, to date, had more than five million viewings on the website YouTube. It also precipitated a round of TV and press interviews with Britney about whether she had ever kissed a woman before - and whether she ever would again. 'Only Madonna, perhaps,' was her verdict.
More than anything, the kiss gave the veneer of acceptance to what would previously have been considered unacceptably risque public behaviour, and made a particular type of lipstick lesbianism almost fashionable.
Their upfront, relaxed relationship is cited as evidence of the new feeling of openness and acceptance.
Tellingly, though, it is still contentious enough for heterosexual young stars to garner edgy publicity by being pictured kissing other women.
New wave: Samantha Ronson, left, and Lindsay Lohan, who broke up earlier this year, had an upfront, relaxed relationship, cited as evidence of the new feeling of openness and acceptance
'Nowadays, the term lipstick lesbian pretty much implies someone who is
pretending to be gay,' says author Judi James, who has written extensively about celebrities.
'It describes the female, publicity-hungry celebrities who are desperate to get their pictures in the paper and who engage in kissing each other to do so.
'For them, the options to get coverage are: one, fall over and show yourself in a state of embarrassing undress; or, two, kiss one of your female friends. It's a posture; an attention-seeking measure.'
Sarah Harding and Nicola Roberts are just one example of a 'couple' who appear to have bought themselves column inches with a kiss. They are members of the band Girls Aloud - but, perhaps crucially, they are not the members everyone has heard of.
Perhaps it was their inability to garner as much press attention as their fellow band member and X Factor judge Cheryl Cole which led them to kiss each other in front of the paparazzi when leaving a late-night party.
Now Peaches Geldof has become the latest young woman to take up this controversial trend after a kiss with a mystery girl in New York made headlines.
So while there is a generation of young female celebrities trying to shock us (or garner media attention) by sending a message that girls can like girls, and then boys, and then girls again, what's really disturbing is that this trend is being emulated by many of today's teenagers.
Attention seeking: Sarah Harding, left, and Nicola Roberts, the lesser known members of Girls Aloud, kissed each other in front of the paparazzi when leaving a late-night party
Indeed, having spoken to many youngsters about this, I'm coming to the worrying conclusion that Katy Perry's song I Kissed A Girl And I Liked It, which was a massive global hit last year, increasingly represents the experience of a generation of girls who are happy and relaxed about public, same-sex sexual experimentation.
I spoke to a group of girls and boys, aged 14 to 23, most of whom said it wasn't unusual to see straight girls kissing other girls at parties.
'It doesn't mean they are lesbians,' says 16-year-old Susan, a grammar school girl from London. 'And I'm not sure they'd do it in a public club. But I have seen it at private parties. I'm absolutely sure they wouldn't take it any further, and it is embarrassing to watch, but these days it's happening more and more. It's clear that some girls now feel it is OK to do.
Why do they do it? Susan's feeling was that much of it is to do with impressing boys, and some of it is just showing off, but also that there is an element of aping female celebrities.
Another young girl, Jennifer, a former private schoolgirl and recent university graduate, told me: 'It's really not such a big deal. Some of my girlfriends do kiss each other at parties - sometimes because they are drunk, sometimes because they think it will impress boys.
Rite of passage: Peaches Geldof has become the latest young woman to take up this controversial trend after a kiss with a mystery girl in New York made headlines
'It doesn't mean at all that they'd go further in private. Just that they are happy with each other to be seen doing that. It is a way of showing off, or flexing their sexual muscles to prove they are not square and boring.'
One 14-year-old girl confided to me that 'kissing a girl' was now considered by some in her set to be one of the first 'sexual bases' - a new rite of passage for teenage girls. 'It's something you have to do. It's part of growing up,' she told me.
Another said: 'We know it's the kind of thing that would shock adults, so we enjoy doing it.'
Well, there's no doubt that adults, and particularly the parents of teenage girls, will be disturbed, to say the least.
Consider the reaction in America when Katy Perry, the 24-year-old American singer of I Kissed A Girl, herself insisted the track was based on a true incident.
The lyrics tell how she 'drink in hand, lost my discretion . . . I kissed a girl and I liked it, I kissed a girl just to try it, I hope my boyfriend don't mind'.
With a winning tune and suggestive-lyrics - dubbed 'lesploitation' by critics - the song went to No 1 in 20 countries. But it also caused massive offence.
Beth Ditto, lead singer of Gossip and a modern lesbian icon, has slammed Katy Perry as 'offensive to gay culture'
Middle American commentators accused her of promoting lesbianism. One church notice board carried the slogan: 'I kissed a girl - and went straight to hell.'
Internet message boards in the U.S. were overloaded as mothers panicked about their daughters' slumber parties turning into vast, experimental orgies.
It's hard to imagine the issue being quite so inflammatory in Britain, but there's no doubt it is increasingly common among middle-class youngsters, many of whom now possess a remarkably audacious sense of sexual confidence.
A recent storyline in E4's teen drama Skins - cult viewing for thousands of British teenagers - suggested that girls kissing is very much a 'live issue' among today's teenage girls.
The series is written by a group of 17 to 25-year- olds, and a recent episode saw two characters, Emily and Naomi, have their first kiss to a backing track of Katy Perry's song.
An E4 spokesperson sought to explain this new fad for young women to blur the edges of their sexuality like this: 'Skins is written by young people who don't see sexuality as defining who they are. They're a bit cooler about it than that, so they think of the characters they create as being in love with a person, rather than a boy or a girl.'
But psychologist Donna Dawson warns that such things can lead to problems - as a result of undue peer pressure.
'Some impressionable young girls may be influenced to behave in a way they really don't want to. It's a trend they may feel they have to latch on to.'
She also points out that this debate is particularly pertinent in Britain, where single-sex day schools and boarding schools are common, and that same-sex experimentation is more likely to be common there than in mixed schools.
Ironically enough, while some girls think it's cool to kiss other girls, 'lipstick lesbianism' has served only to anger sections of the lesbian community.
Beth Ditto, lead singer of Gossip and a modern lesbian icon, has slammed Katy Perry as 'offensive to gay culture'. She condemned her song as an anthem 'for straight girls who like to turn guys on by making out they are gay'.
I would argue that the straight stars who think it terribly risque to 'play gay' are actually rather sad: they are not being emancipated, just using sex in a pathetic way to sell themselves.
And while the ordinary young girls who set out to copy them might feel they are being terribly grown-up and cool, the reality is that such behaviour can compromise both their dignity and self-respect.
