Las Vegas Weekly

December 3, 2008 · 12:22 PM

Girl on girl kissing contests a bit, uh, much?

By Melissa Arseniuk

Photo: Scott Den Herder

I blame Katy Perry.

She is, after all, the one responsible for the undeniably catchy-yet-tacky hit, “I kissed a girl.” It shot to the top of the charts in June and it’s all been downhill from there.

You probably know the song, unless you’ve been reverse-hibernating and have been sleeping under a rock since spring. It has been played at nightclubs ad nauseam.

The tune spotlights the already prevalent drunk girl seduction routine of hey-lets-dirty-dance-and-act-like-we’re-bi-to-make-the-guys-drool.

Girls grind with each other, girls grope just a little and now, girls kiss each other, too.

There’s nothing wrong with any of that; girls kissing girls can be hot (and this is coming from me, a straight-as-straight-can-be girl). But since Perry’s song shot to the top, the whole charade has gone over the top.

Case in point: the proliferation of girl-on-girl kissing contests in Las Vegas nightclubs. A crop of these sort of competitions has recently popped up in clubs across our fair city.

Rok appears to have been the first, with the launch of their “Kissmas” contest on Nov. 12. The Christmas-Kissmas theme is rather puzzling, considering the competition started in November and doesn’t involve decorated trees or Santa Claus, never mind the birth of Jesus – but no one seems to mind: The event attracts a good crowd and everyone seems to enjoy themselves and the kissing displays.

Las Vegas Weekly Nightlife Editor, Xania Woodman, entered the fray on the inaugural night and, to her apparent surprise, placed third in the evening’s competition.

She chronicled the experience for the magazine but never said if she, like Perry, liked it.

Instead of 12 days of Christmas, Rok is hosting four weeks of Kissmas. Semi-finals will be held on Wednesday and the final kiss-off will take place on Dec. 10.

By the time it’s all said and done, the club will hand out $10,000 in cash and prizes, Although, the money isn’t going to who you think.

Here’s the catch: Kissmas is open to industry insiders only, pitting pairs of hotties from various nightclubs against one another, while hosts teams from the clubs compete for the dollar value in bottles that they send to Rok for each event. Points are given for different dollar points as well as the audience reaction to the girls’ kisses.

When all the kissing and selling are complete, the host team with the most points will walk away with the cash.

This strategy effectively guarantees the kissing competitors are both gorgeous and comfortable in the limelight, but it leaves industry outsiders without a stage to showcase their, uh, talents.

Lucky for them, Body English answered the call a few days after Kissmas eve, with an open-call girl-on-girl kiss-off on Nov. 16. The contest took over the club’s usual Sunday School party with a special “French Class” and the pair that shared the hottest kiss walked away with a cool $5k to spit amongst themselves.

But that was just the beginning.

The girls-kissing-girls action was back at Rok two days later, when Kissmas returned for its second week. Then it was down the Strip at Tao, which announced it would enter the ring with a suspiciously similar kissing contest of its own.

Like Body English and Rok, Tao is luring in the ladies with the offer of $5,000 in prize money for the hottest embrace – and free vodka for contestants, too.

The Venetian’s hottest nightclub will host their contest/party on Dec. 11. The name of the night is an obvious nod to Perry: Organizers have appropriately dubbed it, “I Kissed a Girl.”

I’m sure Perry can’t take all of the blame (or, depending on your perspective, credit) but all of these girls-kissing-girls contests seem a bit, oh… what’s the word? Much.

Woodman seemed to hit the nail on the head when she questioned the whole state of affairs post-kiss-off.

In her account of the somewhat rattling experience, she wrote, “Everyone keeps asking, ‘Have we really come to this?!’ The answer is an enthusiastic ‘Yep!’”

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