COVID kills handshake
Demise of centuries-old etiquette a welcome change
Icannot remember how and when I started to greet people with a handshake. Probably it was the point in my life when I transitioned from teen to young adult. Perhaps it was one of those things I did as the number of formal events, from weddings to business meetings, began to play a larger part in my young life. That certainly makes sense, since there would have been few occasions where a handshake was needed during my kindergarten or high school years, other than on the sports field.
I do remember, however, that no one ever taught me how to do a handshake the right way. Instead you seemed to acquire the skill more by the warnings of what not to do, rather than any firm guidance about the right way to do it. It was always particularly important that you did not have a weak handshake, but nor should your grip be too hard either, because that was just being aggressive. But nor should you have a clammy hand because that is just disgusting.
So, I seem to recall being slightly neurotic that my teenage handshakes needed to be of the right grip, neither weak nor vise-like, which if I managed to get the level of grip and clamminess wrong might mean the equivalent of social death.
For something that has played such a central part in starting social relationships for thousands of years, handshakes conventionally receive little formal instruction and guidance as to how to get it right.
There is some disagreement as to how and when the practice of “pressing the flesh” came about as a form of greeting, but the story I first heard was that it was a way of reassuring a partner of your good intentions. If you are extending your right hand — the dominant hand for the majority of people — to shake someone’s hand, then it would be difficult for you to be concealing a knife with which to stab them in the heart.
The etiquette of handshakes was thrust into the spotlight as Donald Trump’s awkward method of greeting foreign leaders seemed to become a power play to emphasize his dominance in any relationship. It was said that the knuckles of French President, Emmanuel Macron, were white after a particularly extended and vigorous handshake with Trump. Japanese Prime Minister Abe was left bemused after a 19-second marathon handshake, which also featured the bizarre handon-top maneuver. For a while, the handshake seemed to have become a blunt instrument of diplomacy and something to be avoided if possible. The deft maneuver by the Polish president’s wife, who managed to do a cunning bait-and-switch and shake Melania’s hand instead, left Trump hanging.
More recently, however, COVID-19 and the fear of infection from touch and proximity to others has seen the almost total disappearance of the handshake since March.
At the moment there are relatively few social occasions where there is an opportunity to shake someone’s hand, but when the situation arises, there seems to be a confusion as to the new etiquette around how we should greet each other. The elbow bump, the foot tap, the head nod, the yoga bow, or even the simple wave seem like poor substitutes for the handshake. For me, recent encounters have involved a hybrid technique: wiggling your elbow in someone’s general direction while intoning the words “virtual handshake.” None of these alternatives, however, have managed to grip the popular imagination quite like the handshake.
Whatever emerges to take its place, it would seem COVID has killed the handshake. It is interesting how the rules of etiquette are being rewritten in ways that we are not fully aware of yet. Perhaps it is not a bad thing that the handshake, with its masculine overtones of domination, appears to have gone the way of the dodo. Perhaps, too, it will be one less reason for other world leaders to fear an encounter with the leader of the free world. When we start to venture out again, the replacement of the handshake should be something that is less reliant upon getting grip and clamminess right and more based upon establishing a trusting and open relationship that isn’t initiated by a test of strength rooted in the practices of centuries past. And that is something I would be pleased to shake on.
At the moment there are relatively few social occasions where there is an opportunity to shake someone’s hand, but when the situation arises, there seems to be a confusion as to the new etiquette around how we should greet each other.