Kissing commonly tends to be done between two characters using their mouths, but in the case of this trope, the kissing is done without the use of mouths.
This can be due to Bizarre Alien Biology, where one or both of the characters kissing may not have mouths at all, or else kissing on the mouth would make doing such a thing awkward or even dangerous. There can also be other reasons as well, such as (possibly) awkwardness.
This is often done as a kiss substitute for younger audiences, and may occur as part of an Interspecies Romance.
Compare Headbutt of Love and Anywhere but Their Lips (the latter still involves mouth kissing, however). Also compare Fantastic Arousal, Alternate Animal Affection and G-Rated Sex. Not to be confused with Awkward Kiss.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- In Stardust Telepath, touching foreheads becomes an act of affection thanks to Yuu's powers.
Comic Books
- In Invincible, the Thraxan version of kissing involves both parties extending their tongues and essentially licking each other's tongues, as seen when Mark visits Thraxa in issue #25.
Film — Animation
- In Epic (1984), Sol and Luna share one by rubbing their noses with each other after they are reunited near the end.
- In The Lion King (1994), Simba and Nala nuzzle their faces together as a means of showing affection soon after they run into each other for the first time in years.
- In WALL•E, EVE kisses WALL•E using an electrical discharge in despair after WALL•E loses his memory. Said kiss also restores his memory. Justified by the fact that not only are the both of them robots, neither of them are even designed with a mouth - WALL•E's "head" is essentially just a pair of binocular-shaped "eyes" connected to his box-like body by a thin neck, while EVE has a body shaped like an upside-down egg, the top part of which features a small dot matrix display that displays her "eyes" in different shapes to simulate facial expressions, Expressive Mask style.
Film — Live-Action
- Bear Island (1979). The protagonist playfully asks for an Eskimo kiss from a female expeditioner, who like him is rugged up against the arctic cold. She obliges.
- In Demolition Man, the future city of San Angeles, even simply high-fiving is thought as being intimate there; people are taught not to do any meaningless physical contact.
Literature
- Two instances in the Animorphs prequel novel The Hork-Bajir Chronicles:
- Aldrea (who has morphed into a Hork-Bajir) and Dak Hamee kiss for the first time by pressing their foreheads against each other's.
- Aldrea also mentions in her narration that it is much like what Andalites do when kissing: they stroke each other's faces with their hands, as they don't have mouths to kiss with.
- Books of the Raksura: The Raksura have Voluntary Shapeshifting powers that let them assume a vaguely Draconic Humanoid form; consequently, they nip each other's necks rather than kiss.
- Doctor Who New Adventures: In The Also People, the People rub noses rather than kiss, leading to some confusion the first time the Doctor's companion Chris tries to make out with his Girl of the Week.
- In the future world of Lilith's Brood, humanity has been altered by aliens, and as a result adults feel extreme discomfort if they make skin-to-skin contact with one another. Because of this, stroking someone's hair has become the default gesture of affection.
- Shellpeople in The Ship Who... are unable to move or be touched directly, but have sensors running through the ships or stations that they're built into.
- For Helva, having a brawn lay a hand on the access panel of the column where her body is suspended qualifies as an intimate gesture, though usually platonic. When Niall confesses his love for her, he embraces her column.
- After Tia became a shellperson her doctor and guardian, and the shellperson running the hospital where he works, started telling her "Zen hugs", meaning "The hugs that we would give you if we were here and could hug you, but we're not and we can't." The phrase spread to her classmates and her doctor's patients, to the point where he mentions one patient's technophobic relative telling them "Zen hugs" over a video call.
- However, this isn't enough for Tia when she falls in love with a man who would greatly like to hold her. Her Iconic Item is a teddy bear in a glass case in her cabin; during an emotional moment, she pops the case open and asks Alex if he'd like to hug the bear. Alex understands the significance of the gesture and cuddles it, and later has a symbolic dream about her as a soft-skinned human in his arms who then turns into an animate plush bear.
- In Warrior Cats, the cats show love by cleaning each other's pelts or twining their tails together. The latter display of affection is never platonic, but the first often takes place between friends or family.
Live-Action TV
- Fellow Travelers: Towards the end of their Christmastime rendezvous, Hawkins Fuller briefly rubs his nose
◊ against Timothy Laughlin's.
- Interview with the Vampire (2022): Blink and you'll miss it, but just before Lestat de Lioncourt turns Louis de Pointe du Lac into a vampire in "In Throes of Increasing Wonder...", the former very briefly gives the latter an Eskimo kiss (i.e. rubbing the tips of their noses together).
- In the Grand Finale of Legion (2017), as The Fellowship Has Ended, Syd gives Kerry a kiss goodbye by kissing her own gloved hand and then pressing it into Kerry's hand.
- In the Star Trek universe, the Vulcans have a finger-touching gesture that seems to be used as a kissing analogue. The basic motion is simply extending the first two fingers of the right hand and touching fingertips, but finger-stroking motions can be added for greater intimacy.
- In Tracker (2001), Cirronians seem to have an intimate/comforting gesture of stroking the throat. Cole does kiss Mel in one episode, but another has him comforting her afte a near-rape by giving quick, gentle strokes to the throat/neck. Learning that Mel is part Cirronian herself later on just makes it fit that much better.
Video Games
- In Mass Effect 2, kissing is a problem for female Shepard and her optional alien Love Interest Garrus, as his species doesn't really have lips and swapping saliva could lead to a fatal allergic reaction for both of them. They settle for a Headbutt of Love instead. Fanart has fun with this.
Western Animation
- Inverted in The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron, Boy Genius episode "Win, Lose and Kaboom!": when April locks lips with Jimmy, he assumes that she's kissing him, but she states that it's the Gorlockan seal of trust, and has no idea what a kiss is. Averted when she does it again later, saying "that was a kiss" after Jimmy asks if that was the aforementioned seal of trust.
- At the end of every episode of Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood, Daniel rubs his nose at the screen as a sign of endearment while saying, "ugga mugga" (which is said to be a word for "I love you").
- In Gargoyles, gargoyles touch each other's hair to kiss. Since not all of them have lips and many of them have protruding fangs, actual kissing would be awkward. That said, they are aware of how humans kiss and Goliath is okay with regular human style kissing with Elisa. Notably, Angela (who was raised by humans) and Broadway (who's a big fan of human romance movies) enjoy kissing human-style.
- My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic uses nuzzling in place of kissing.
- The World of David the Gnome: In Gnome culture, couples like David and Lisa only kiss Eskimo-style (rubbing noses).
Real Life
- Eskimo kissing (a kunik in Inuit terminology) or nose kissing is done by two people rubbing their noses against each other's.
- Butterfly kissing, done by rubbing eyelashes on one's body, not necessarily with other eyelashes.
