Emojis are facial expressions, common objects, places, types of weather, or animals used to visually express oneself through text, messaging, and social media, without the use of words. They are important in today’s society because they are used to represent an individual.
With that being said emojis don’t always provide an accurate representation of everyone. The natural hair community is just one example.
Although Apple has finally expanded their emojis to include various skin tones and races, the hair textures aren’t as diverse. The emojis are designed with fine straight hair, which not everyone has. So as a result, a girl from Chicago, Rhianna Jones and her friend Kerrilyn Gibson came up with the idea to create afro textured hair emojis.
Kerrilyn Gibson designed these emojis and then created a petition on Change.org to gain support for their addition. Since then the petition has gained more than 23,000 signatures. The emojis are expected to come out in the year 2020.
Although this accomplishment may seem minute, it is a big step for the natural hair community. Being represented in the community means so much because we feel accepted for our differences. This not only goes for African American but anyone with curly hair, or any other differences.
Apple has also included same sex couples and emoji plans for, hijabs, those who are deaf, and interracial couples in the future. The interracial couple emojis were created through Tinder’s #representlove campaign. Because the use of Tinder interracial couples have increased. There petition for these emojis gained over 50,000 signatures within the first year. This is a victory for interracial couples everywhere who can now be represented in the emoji world.
I am genuinely excited for Apple to come out with these new emojis in the upcoming years and I applaud them for trying to represent everyone because that is a hard task. Although it may not seem important it is the first step to inclusion and acceptance which means so much more than a simple emoji.