Love is a many-splendored thing, especially when you’re gawking at it from the outside. In this column, we’ll be examining the celebrity couples that give us hope for our own romantic futures and trying to learn what we can from their well-documented bonds.
It’s been a banner year for celebrity PDA, but the practice wasn’t truly elevated into an art form until singer Rosalía and The Bear star Jeremy Allen White were recently spotted making out in LA, each with a lit cigarette in hand.
I die! It’s giving indie sleaze! It’s giving Chloë Sevigny’s wedding! It’s giving Judy Greer’s “fashion suicide” pitch from 13 Going on 30! Smoking kills, I know, and I’m not endorsing the practice, but…come on. You have to hand it to them:
Cigarettes aside, there’s so much to unpack in this image. Rosalía’s cute little tennis skirt! Her tiny Prada pumps! White’s denim-on-denim look! (At least it appears to be denim-on-denim, but I might need a full satellite review of these images to be sure.) The wanton, grungy abandon with which these two are hugging! Actually, can a hug be wanton? Well, if it can, this is most definitely that.
The young-love, first-kiss-at-a-gross-party vibe that these two are giving off is particularly notable because they’re both semi-recently separated from other people; Rosalía broke off her engagement with rapper Rauw Alejandro in July, and White and his ex-wife Addison Timlin divorced in September. The new couple’s first recorded date was an outing to see Wild Things at the Los Feliz 3 movie theater and grab dinner at Little Dom’s, a.k.a. the most quintessential LA date of all time—with the possible exception of a trip to the farmers’ market, which the two pulled off in October. (White allegedly bought Rosalía a bouquet of “craspedia flowers, eucalyptus, and magnolia leaves”; classy man!)
Now, of course, we return to the true star of the moment: the cigarettes. Smoking rates are way down in the US, which is objectively a good thing, and I’m certainly not going to argue against lung health and/or increased longevity. And yet…we all know that old movies wherein noir bombshells smoke out of lacquered cigarette holders are the ultimate mood, and Rosalía and White’s sesh is kind of giving that energy (albeit with a touch more Dimes Square flair).
