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In February 1896, when the germ theory of disease was still fairly new, an Atlantic writer wondered whether the “good old-fashioned hand-shake” would survive into the next century: “Will it some time be as obsolete as the curtsy with which our grandmothers greeted the beaux of their day, or the kiss that the gallant impressed on the fragile hand that he raised so respectfully to his lips?”
Yet all these years later, the handshake remains the default form of greeting in America. We continue to reach out—thumbs up, fingers relaxed, palms turned to the side—whenever we make someone’s acquaintance or seal a deal. Even the coronavirus pandemic couldn’t kill the handshake, though it seemed for a moment like it might. In 2020, Anthony Fauci, then the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, encouraged Americans to discard the unhygienic practice for the sake of our collective health (another infectious-disease expert went as far as deeming the handshake a “bioweapon”). And, for a time, some strangers did keep their distance. But eventually the vaccines were released, the masks came off, and the flesh continued to be pressed.
My own aversion to the handshake is rooted less in worry about viral transmission and more in the tendency of certain fellow men—and, in my experience, it is invariably a male phenomenon—to use the gesture as an opportunity to assert dominance. Their handshakes aren’t merely firm; they’re vice-like. This character was dubbed the “knuckle-cruncher” in these pages by the writer David Hammarstrom Jr. in 1977. Hammarstrom insisted that the secret to defending against aggression masquerading as civility was to “get your hand into his as quickly and snugly as you could, before he had the chance to turn you into a lefty.”
That tactic might spare your digits, but you’re still left vulnerable to the equally abhorrent arm-wrencher—i.e., the guy who doesn’t shake your hand so much as attempt to separate your shoulder from its socket. President Trump is the best-known practitioner of this technique, and you could see it on display recently when he welcomed King Charles III to the White House (though, as others have noted, it appeared that the British monarch, aware of the president’s proclivity, had braced himself for—apologies—the Yank’s yank). In 2020, The Atlantic’s Megan Garber argued that the handshake wasn’t as friendly and egalitarian as it seemed, and that a grip deemed weak or clammy could undermine a first impression. “Respect for the other” is “the basis of etiquette,” she wrote. “The handshake no longer fits that ethos.”
But then there’s the problem of what does fit that ethos. A hug is too intimate for strangers. A head nod is too distant for close friends. It’s hard to imagine Americans agreeing en masse to start bowing to one another; likewise, the light kiss on the cheek is probably too alien to our national sensibilities to ever fully catch on. A number of novel alternatives have been proposed, including touching shoes and tapping elbows, but most of them look and feel ridiculous. The most viable option is the fist bump. In 2013, James Hamblin made the case that the move satisfies our desire for physical contact (“I’m extending my arm to touch you”) without engaging in full-on, palm-to-palm intimacy.
As for what to do if the other person declines to meet your knuckles with theirs, Hamblin offers this suggestion: “If they don’t acknowledge your fist and match it, you can whisper ‘Think of the children.’” (For the record, although the fist bump sometimes gets called a “dap,” the latter is a far more expansive and playful category. As Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote in 2008, the dap originated in the Black community—likely during the Vietnam War, according to some accounts; today you can witness the most impressively elaborate variants exchanged before NBA games.) Still, it’s reasonable to worry whether the fist bump—of which I’m an advocate—is appropriate in more serious settings. Do you really want to risk fist bumping the person interviewing you for a job?
The handshake is undeniably a mainstay of American etiquette, for better and worse, and that probably means that it will endure. Those of us who aren’t fans can carry on with our fist bumps, side hugs, or whatever else we come up with, in hopes that society might one day settle on a preferable substitute. But the old-fashioned standard may just be impossible to shake.
The post Will Americans Ever Lose Their Grip on the Handshake? appeared first on The Atlantic.
