Representation matters. That’s why I’m excited that emojis, those little icons used in texting and other online messaging, may be taking a step towards greater gender diversity.
The problem was noticeable. Last week, feminine-product brand Always released a new video in its “Like a Girl” series, raising awareness about the limited range of female emojis. “Girls send over a billion emojis every day,” it tells us—but most female emojis are wearing pink or show stereotypical images, such as a bride, a princess, Playboy-style figures with bunny ears, or the recipient of a haircut. Male emojis show a range of professions and sports activities. The girls in the video are understandably disgruntled by this.
A fix may already be on the way. New emoji are approved by the non-profit Unicode Consortium, which includes tech giants like Google and Apple as well as a number of individuals. Once they approve an emoji, vendors like Google and Apple take the base emoji character and can add color and other custom details for their specific implementations. Currently, a vendor can implement a gendered version of a base Unicode emoji, but has to pick only one gender. The consortium is, however, considering a new specification, Unicode Technical Standard #52, that would allow vendors to offer end users the option of choosing male, female, or gender-neutral versions of the same base emoji—similar to the way they can now choose different skin tones for many emoji.
The draft specification explains how things have been done in the past, stating, “Unicode itself does not normally specify the gender for emoji characters: the emoji character is RUNNER, not MAN RUNNING; POLICE OFFICER not POLICEMAN. For a greater sense of realism, however, vendors typically have picked a particular gender to display, even for the neutral characters.”
The vendors have tended to follow gender stereotypes. Unicode’s non-gendered police officer, construction worker, medic, guardsman, and spy are all implemented as male. Women remain limited to princess, bride, dancer, or the passive recipients of a haircut or a head massage.
The new specification would help—and one senses someone involved has at least a basic understanding of the difference between gender identity and expression, too: “The Gender customization allow [sic] vendors to display male, female, and neutral versions. Neutral doesn’t mean the default (untagged) presentation, which could be any of these three; it means a specifically a [sic] gender-neutral presentation. These customizations are to mark appearance, and not gender identification.”
The draft specification would allow female, male, or neutral versions of a wrestler, weightlifter, spy, or police officer, among other emojis. Even the bride and “woman with bunny ears” emoji would allow gender customization, as would a proposed “man in tuxedo.” (I hope Unicode makes all of the emoji names gender neutral as part of this process, too.) The princess won’t be gender-customizable, presumably because a new emoji featuring a prince is scheduled for later this year, giving us separate emoji for male and female crowned heads.) I don’t know why the construction worker isn’t on the list, though.
Are male, female, and neutral options enough, given the vast spectrum of gender—but keeping in mind the small space of an emoji? The new emoji specification has not yet been approved, so if you have thoughts on the matter (or if you think additional emoji should be gender customizable), you can view the draft and give feedback.
Emojis already took a step towards greater inclusion last year by including two-mom and two-dad families (with either one or two kids), in addition to the same-sex couples they’ve had for a few years now. None of these emoji can be customized by skin tone, however, so with most vendors, one is stuck with the default bright yellow. (EmojiOne, which produces a set of open-source emoji for any project or developer to use, makes all of its family icons White.) Given all the various configurations of skin tones among family members, maybe the generic bright yellow is the best solution here, so that we don’t have to choose from overly lengthy menus—or maybe there’s a clever solution that would make customization easier. In any case, EmojiOne should do something other than all White.
One further emoji that has not yet made its way to our screens is the rainbow flag. Technology news site The Next Web reported last July that some members of the Unicode Consortium were open to this, but also concerned that simply adding this one flag “would provide no orderly path to encoding additional, similar flags for other social groups or causes.” If you wish to make your opinion known, visit the Unicode website.
Emoji are never going to be perfect images of our lives. They are fun, concise icons for certain aspects of the world. At the same time, representation does matter. I’m glad they’re allowing for greater aspects of identity, such as skin tone and family structure. I’m hopeful about the new gender specifications, too. We don’t need yet another venue telling girls all they can be are brides and princesses.
Personally, one of the other proposed features in the new specification has me equally excited—the ability to customize hair color and to specify red, long missing from most vendors’ emoji sets. As a proud redhead, I’ll be happy to have an emoji that finally represents that part of my identity. When I can put together an IKEA bookshelf and brag to my friends using a red-headed, female, construction worker emoji, I’ll be even happier.