Erika Kirk — the widow of slain MAGA activist Charlie Kirk — recently went viral after hugging Vice President JD Vance onstage at a rally at the University of Mississippi. Now, body language experts are giving their opinion on what they believe the hug may signify.
Last Wednesday, Kirk — who now leads her late husband's organization — introduced the vice president, and as he came onstage, they embraced, with HuffPost's Jillian Wilson writing that Kirk and Vance were "hugging tightly with their bodies pressed up against each other." At one moment, Kirk's hand can be seen in Vance's hair, and Vance's hand can be seen dropping to Kirk's hip briefly before he walked to the lectern.
Wilson interviewed several experts to break down the embrace, including behavioral analyst, body language expert and bestselling author Traci Brown. She told Wilson that the hug was "a super-intimate move."
"[B]eyond that, it controls his attention — so, she’s controlling what he’s looking at," Brown told HuffPost.
"His hands drop to her hips, and that is not formal, and that is, in many instances, not appropriate," she added. "However, it’s what they’re doing."
Author Patti Wood, who the Washington Post described as "the Babe Ruth of body language experts," opined that the hug suggested that the hug between Vance and Kirk was more than a formal gesture between professionals in a work environment. She commented that Vance's "facial expressions are positive" and that both his smile and refusal to pull away from the tight embrace suggested "he's into it."
"In the hug, also, they’re pressed up against each other, he is smiling, and the little crème de la crème on the sexual aspect of that interaction, besides the pelvis placement, is she’s running her hands through his hair," Wood told Wilson. "She’s got her hands inside of his hair, and if you look at the fingers, there’s a tightening, that’s a curling around of the fingers, meaning she is pulling him closer."
Communication and body language expert Karen Donaldson told the outlet that while the gesture was intimate, that doesn't necessarily mean it was romantic. She referred to a body language concept called "proxemics," which is how experts interpret what the distance between two people can mean. In a professional setting, the typical distance between two people can be anywhere from 12 to 25 feet. In a social environment, that distance is reduced to four to 12 feet. And in a personal setting, that distance is reduced to one to four feet. Donaldson suggested that the closeness between Vance and Kirk signified a "heavy emotional connection."
"When we go just below the lower part of your ribs, that’s someone’s intimate space. That signals that there’s a connection, but it’s a little bit more on the intimate side," Donaldson said. "They’re facing each other directly and they are in each other’s intimate space — and what I want to say about that is it’s mutual, because no one’s pulling away."
Click here to read Wilson's full article in HuffPost.