Kiss Mark Emoji

A red lipstick kiss mark, the impression left on skin, paper, or a glass after pressing painted lips against it. It's the evidence of a kiss, not the kiss itself, and that distinction matters. 😘 shows a face in the act of kissing. 💋 shows what's left behind. The stain. The proof.

In texting, 💋 sits at the more seductive end of the kiss emoji spectrum. Dictionary.com calls it "more seductive than the kiss emoji," noting associations with "sexiness, cosmetics and beauty, and in some cases, sassiness." It's the emoji version of leaving your lipstick on someone's collar.

The lipstick kiss mark predates emoji by centuries. During World War I and WWII, women pressed lipstick-stained kisses onto envelopes sent to servicemen, marking them SWAK (Sealed With A Kiss). They'd press the letter against a makeup mirror first to stiffen the surface and get a better imprint. The emoji is a digital descendant of that tradition: a kiss you can send without being in the room.

💋 gets used in three distinct ways. First, romantic: "Goodnight 💋" or "Can't wait to see you 💋" is a digital kiss with more weight than 😘. The lipstick mark reads as deliberate and intimate. Second, beauty content: makeup tutorials, lipstick swatches, and cosmetics branding all use 💋 because it's literally a lip print. Third, sass: dropping 💋 after a cutting remark ("I said what I said 💋") is the emoji equivalent of a mic drop with lipstick.

The emoji is more common from women than men in texting, according to Sweetyhigh, partly because of the lipstick association. When a guy sends 💋, it carries more weight precisely because it's unexpected. The lipstick connotation makes it feel like the sender deliberately chose the seductive option over the safer 😘.

💋 is also the emoji of sign-offs. It's the digital XOXO, the text equivalent of kissing the bottom of a letter. In British texting culture, where signing off with "x" (kiss) is standard practice, 💋 serves as the visual upgrade.

💋 leans heavily flirty. Dictionary.com says it's "more seductive" than 😘, with connotations of "sexiness" and "sassiness." Between close friends (especially women), it can be affectionate without being romantic. But from a crush or someone you're dating, assume it's flirty unless makeup is specifically being discussed.

• •Sent after a goodnight or goodbye = definitely flirty, they chose the seductive kiss
• •Sent after a compliment = confirming the flattery with a physical gesture
• •Sent in a beauty/makeup conversation = probably literal (lipstick, not romance)
• •Sent after a sassy remark = 'I said it and I look good saying it' energy
• •Sent by a guy = rarer, therefore heavier; he deliberately chose the lipstick mark

The lipstick kiss mark is one of the oldest physical symbols of affection that still survives in digital form.

The tradition of "X" as a kiss traces to the Middle Ages, when illiterate people would sign documents with an X (representing the Christian cross) and then kiss the mark to show sincerity. "Sealed with a kiss" was literal. By the 1870s, Florence Montgomery's novel Seaforth described letters ending with "the inevitable row of kisses, sometimes expressed by × × ×." The practice became XOXO (hugs and kisses) by the mid-20th century.

During World War I and II, the tradition got physical. Women pressed lipstick-stained kisses onto envelopes and letters sent to servicemen overseas, marking them SWAK (Sealed With A Kiss). To get the best lip imprint, they'd press the letter against a makeup mirror to stiffen the surface. They'd apply cold cream over the lipstick and let it dry so the print wouldn't smudge in transit. A lipstick kiss on an envelope in 1943 was the equivalent of sending 💋 in 2026: an intimate gesture compressed into a visual symbol.

The lip print as a cultural icon reached its peak through the Rolling Stones. In 1970, art student John Pasche was paid £50 to design a logo for the band. Mick Jagger suggested the tongue of the Hindu goddess Kali as inspiration. The result, a pair of red lips with a protruding tongue, first appeared on Sticky Fingers in 1971 and became arguably the most famous rock logo ever. The V&A Museum bought Pasche's original artwork for £51,000 in 2008. From £50 to £51,000: a 1,020x return.

The 💋 emoji arrived in 2010, inheriting all of this baggage: the medieval X, the WWII SWAK envelope, the Rolling Stones lips, and the general association between red lipstick and confidence that runs from Cleopatra through Marilyn Monroe to modern beauty culture.

Approved in Unicode 6.0 (2010) as U+1F48BU+1F48B KISS MARK. Added to Emoji 1.0 in 2015. Part of the Smileys & Emotion category, emotion subcategory. CLDR short name: "kiss mark." Keywords: kiss, lips. The design across all platforms shows a red lipstick impression with the distinctive upper-lip cupid's bow and lower-lip curve, always in red or deep pink.

The six Suzuki-Tsuchihashi lip-print types

1. 1200Medieval illiterate signers mark documents with X (the cross) and kiss the mark to show sincerity. 'Sealed with a kiss' is literal.
2. 1878Florence Montgomery's novel Seaforth describes letters ending with 'the inevitable row of kisses, × × ×'
3. 1917WWI women begin pressing lipstick kisses onto envelopes to servicemen. SWAK (Sealed With A Kiss) becomes common.
4. 1970John Pasche designs the Rolling Stones tongue & lips logo for £50, inspired by Mick Jagger and goddess Kali↗
5. 2008V&A Museum buys Pasche's original Rolling Stones lips artwork for £51,000 (1,020x the original fee)
6. 2010Unicode 6.0 approves U+1F48B KISS MARK↗
7. 2024💋 overtakes 😘 in Google Trends search interest for the first time (May 2024: 43 vs 39)

The three-second rule

80 million bacteria in 10 seconds

58 hours, 35 minutes, 58 seconds

• •The XOXO tradition traces to the Middle Ages when illiterate people signed with an X (representing the cross) and kissed the mark. "Sealed with a kiss" was once literally true.
• •During WWII, women pressed lipstick kisses onto envelopes for servicemen overseas. They'd press letters against mirrors for a sharper imprint and apply cold cream so the print survived transit. SWAK (Sealed With A Kiss) was standard mail protocol for love letters.
• •The Rolling Stones' lips and tongue logo was designed for £50 by art student John Pasche in 1970. Mick Jagger suggested the Hindu goddess Kali's tongue as inspiration. The V&A bought the original for £51,000 in 2008.
• •💋 overtook 😘 in Google Trends search interest in May 2024 for the first time ever. In 2020, 😘 was searched more than twice as much. The seductive kiss mark surpassed the friendly air kiss.
• •Gossip Girl popularized XOXO as a sign-off in modern culture. Each episode ended with "XOXO, Gossip Girl." The show gave a centuries-old letter tradition its 21st-century soundtrack.
• •The TV Tropes "Lipstick Mark" page documents the trope in film and TV: a lipstick kiss on someone's face or collar as visual evidence of an encounter. 💋 is this trope compressed into 21 pixels.
• •Lip prints are unique to every individual and stable for life. The six-type classification used in forensic labs (Suzuki & Tsuchihashi, 1970) has been used in real homicide and burglary cases. The first US appellate court to admit lip-print evidence was People v. Davis in Illinois, 1999.
• •Marilyn Monroe's Elizabeth Arden lipstick sold for $65,000 at Julien's Auctions, while her Max Factor tube went for $15,625. For context: Audrey Hepburn's Cartier 18k-gold-and-sapphire lipstick holder sold for around $72,500 in 2017.
• •The Hershey Company produces more than 70 million Hershey's Kisses every day across two factories. Milton Hershey launched the candy in 1907 and trademarked the name in the 1920s. Nobody is entirely sure why they're called kisses; one theory is that the extruding machine makes a kissing sound against the conveyor belt.
• •A 2012 study by Nicolas Guéguen in the International Journal of Hospitality Management found that waitresses wearing red lipstick received tips from more male patrons and received larger tips than waitresses wearing brown, pink, or no lipstick. The effect only worked for red, and only with male patrons. The red 💋 is coded, not coincidental.
• •The scientific study of kissing is called philematology. A passionate kiss engages between 23 and 34 facial muscles plus 112 postural muscles. One frequently repeated figure claims the average person spends roughly 336 hours (about two weeks) kissing in a lifetime, though the number comes from a 1970s breath-mint company study, so take it loosely.
• •The V-J Day Times Square kiss photographed by Alfred Eisenstaedt on August 14, 1945 was not what it seemed. Astronomers later dated the photo to 5:51 p.m. via shadow analysis. The woman, Greta Zimmer Friedman, was a dental assistant, not a nurse. And in 2 of the 4 frames Eisenstaedt shot, she is visibly pushing the sailor away. The most famous kiss photograph of the 20th century was non-consensual.
• •The number of cheek kisses in a standard European greeting ranges from zero to four: Britain usually none, Spain and Italy two, the Netherlands three, and parts of northern France four. The French say you can tell what city you're in by counting.
• •Romantic kissing isn't universal. A 2015 cross-cultural survey found that only ~46% of human cultures practice the romantic kiss. Parental kissing is near-universal, but pressing lips together as lovers is a behavior tied to socially stratified societies, not a pan-human instinct.
• •The oldest written record of a romantic kiss is a Mesopotamian cuneiform tablet from Sippar dated 1900-1595 BCE: "My upper lip becomes moist, while my lower lip trembles! I shall embrace him, I shall kiss him." A 2023 Science paper used it to push the earliest-kiss date back 1,000 years past the previously cited Bronze Age Indian manuscript.
• •Gustav Klimt's *The Kiss* (1908) has never been auctioned. Experts estimate its value between $400 million and $800 million. Klimt's Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer sold for $236.4M in 2025, making it the second-most-expensive painting ever auctioned.
• •Prince's "Kiss" hit #1 on the Billboard Hot 100) on April 19, 1986, and held the spot for two weeks. Warner Bros. didn't want to release it as a single. Rolling Stone later ranked it the 85th greatest song of all time.
• •The 2025 Coldplay Kiss Cam incident at Gillette Stadium (July 16, 2025) went from a 30-second jumbotron clip to a billion views across platforms. CEO Andy Byron and HR chief Kristin Cabot of the tech company Astronomer both resigned within days. The highest-consequence kiss cam appearance in the tradition's 40+ year history.
• •From 1934 to 1968, the Hays Code held Hollywood kisses to about three seconds. Hitchcock's workaround in *Notorious* (1946) was a 2½-minute kiss scene composed of compliant three-second kisses interrupted by murmurs. The censors couldn't cut it because no individual kiss broke the rule.
• •A 10-second intimate kiss transfers about 80 million bacteria between partners, according to a 2014 study by Remco Kort's team at TNO. Couples who kiss more than nine times a day converge on a shared oral microbiome.
• •Emperor Tiberius banned the Roman daily kiss, cotidiana oscula, around 21 AD, likely because it was spreading herpes through the patrician class. It's the earliest documented public-health response to a social-kissing custom, roughly 2,000 years before anyone identified a virus.
• •Ekkachai and Laksana Tiranarat set the Guinness World Record for longest kiss on Valentine's Day 2013 in Pattaya, Thailand, at 58 hours, 35 minutes, 58 seconds. Guinness retired the category in 2023 after contestants began passing out and, in one case, requiring resuscitation.
• •Paris removed approximately 45 tonnes of love locks from the Pont des Arts in 2015 after the railings began collapsing. One million padlocks, 4x the bridge's weight limit. The €750,000 removal took four months. Fines for attaching objects to Paris bridges now reach €500.
• •The "Lipstick Effect" isn't a joke. Leonard Lauder publicly connected lipstick sales to economic downturns after noticing sales rose 11% in Q4 2001, echoing a 25% rise during the Great Depression. The theory has since mutated: a nail-polish index in the 2010s, a mascara index during COVID because masks hid lips.

• •People sometimes use 💋 when they mean 😘. The difference matters: 💋 is more seductive and intimate. In a message to a new dating interest, 💋 signals more intensity than 😘. If you want light and playful, use 😘. If you want bold and charged, use 💋.
• •💋 in beauty content (lipstick swatches, makeup tutorials) is literal, not romantic. Context is everything. A beauty influencer using 💋 is talking about cosmetics, not sending you a kiss.
• •Guys sometimes avoid 💋 because of the lipstick association. When a guy does send it, it carries more weight because the choice was deliberate. He could have sent 😘 and didn't.

• •The Rolling Stones' tongue and lips logo (1970) is the most famous lip image in rock history. Designed by John Pasche for £50, it first appeared on Sticky Fingers (1971). The V&A Museum bought the original for £51,000.
• •Gossip Girl (2007-2012) ended every episode with "XOXO, Gossip Girl," reviving the centuries-old kiss-and-hug letter sign-off for a new generation. The show is partly responsible for XOXO's survival in digital communication.
• •The WWII SWAK (Sealed With A Kiss) tradition gave the lipstick kiss mark its most emotionally charged origin: real kisses on real letters from real women to real soldiers. 💋 inherits all of that weight.

• •💋 is U+1F48BU+1F48B. Part of the Smileys & Emotion category, emotion subcategory. Common shortcodes: :kiss::kiss: (GitHub, Slack, Discord). Note: :kiss::kiss: and :kissing::kissing: map to different emojis on different platforms.
• •All vendor designs use red or deep pink. There's no platform variation in color for this emoji, unlike many faces which vary between Apple (yellow), Google (yellow), and Samsung (historically varied).
• •If building a Valentine's Day feature, 💋 is one of the top seasonal emojis alongside ❤️, 🌹, and 💕. Schedule content for early February.

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