What Do Kisses Say About Our Industry? x

Words by Tammie Meera Ash

It’s no secret that TV is an industry of ‘kissers’. Whether it’s on the end of a text or an email, sending an ‘x’ is engrained into the culture of the industry almost as much as ghosting or hiring your mates is.  

So why is it such a thing and how did it start? Work cultures are usually built from the top and moulded by those in power. “My girlfriend asked me why I’m sending kisses in emails and texts, and I was like, I don’t know, everyone in telly does it.” I was told by a female production secretary. 

Was it a trickle down from executives to seem non-threatening in an industry that is famously quite brutal? Or is it the opposite, with freelancers lower down the food chain using kisses to people-please their bosses? I have so many questions.  

Although I can’t speak for the TV industry of way back when, kisses nowadays feel like a way to seem nice regardless of whether you like the person you’re giving them to and regardless of whether you yourself are a nice person! 

I’ve witnessed mortal enemies showering each other with kisses; people who clearly dislike each other but for the fear of looking like an ogre, just continue to kiss each other anyway. And it just dilutes the meaning of a kiss.  

Kisses are so excessively used that they’re just lobbed onto the end of everything; they’re used to soften the blow of a rejection or diffuse tension, but they also enable toxic behaviour especially in the Mean Girls-eque cliques of telly. 

As I write this, I’m shivering thinking about how many industry people I’m alienating by admitting that I’m not a kisser and that any previous kisses I’ve sent were solely to fit into the status quo and be as palatable as possible - something that is already very difficult to do in this industry as a working-class woman of colour. 

I’ve tried changing my ways by throwing out kisses like confetti – two kisses particularly when asking for annual leave – but I’ve found that it really didn’t affect my likeability in those places. So I don’t play into kiss culture. If someone is going to dislike you, they’ll do it regardless and no number of kisses will save you. 

I compiled a list of 92 people in TV that I’ve worked and interacted with enough to know whether they’re a kisser or not; if they’ve sent kisses more than 5 times via email or text, they’re a kisser. Here’s what my data shows: 

71% of my peers are kissers.

92% of women, across all genres, are kissers. 

52% of people I know in factual send kisses as opposed to 97% of people in reality TV. 

20% of men in factual send kisses compared to 93% of men in reality. 

I rarely recall a straight man working in factual sending me an ‘x’. I spoke to a heterosexual male producer in factual who said: “almost every [kiss] I get is from a woman - I wouldn’t necessarily feel comfortable putting an x at the end of an email to a female colleague.” They do however lean into it more in factual entertainment and even more in reality TV. My LGBTQ+ colleagues tend be kissers across the board, regardless of genre. Similarly, women are kissers across genres and so are talent execs. 

And when it comes to editorial versus production, production is winning the kiss game by a mile. As one of the most stressful and female-dominated career paths in TV, this doesn’t surprise me. What better way is there to temper your frustration and prove you’re an ‘unproblematic’ woman than to fire out a kiss or two? 

A conversation popped up with my production team on a previous job; Freelancer A admitted that they sign off every email with one kiss as standard, two kisses if the person has made them very happy but no kisses if they’re annoyed. Freelancer B agreed enthusiastically and said that no kisses was a clear sign of their own annoyance and assumed it was obvious enough to pick up on.  

I spoke to a non-kisser about this - a male researcher in documentary - and he said: “are people supposed to know this? Or is it just a code for them so they can vent without getting into trouble?” It’s a good question. I noticed this pattern of behaviour at work before they’d admitted it. And it’s a growing habit, especially amongst junior members of a team who feel the need to behave in a passive aggressive manner simply because the industry can be so ruthless. 

I’ve never been a kisser and I’d feel ingenuine pretending to be one. No one uses them in the corporate world. I’ve spent a third of my life studying and working as a civil engineer - don’t even get me started on how an email kiss would go down amongst a bunch of engineers!

But in TV, and if you’re a female especially, it comes across as brazen to not reciprocate a kiss in a text or email. There’s a stench of arrogance about it. It’s a middle finger up. And many assume you simply don’t like them because of it; “I overthink it too much but if I don’t get an x back, it kills me with anxiety. I’m like, they hate me,” I was told by a female production coordinator in reality TV. 

“[Zero] kisses can be read as blunt.” A male runner told me. “I used to take it to heart but now I realise it’s purely personality-based just like some people aren’t huggers.” 

So, after all this research, will I change my non-kiss ways? It’s highly unlikely and it’s nothing personal. I understand more about why people choose to use them, but I still can’t help but think that even if kisses are here to stay – is their power all too often coded or a blatant industry assimilation?

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About the Author

Tammie Meera Ash is an Assistant Producer and has worked in specialist factual, factual entertainment and reality TV. Prior to this, she studied and worked as a civil engineer. An alumna of Edinburgh TV Festival’s ‘The Network’ 2020 and Grierson DocLab 2018, and a writer and freelance journalist with bylines published in The New Statesman and VICE.