Redheads, rejoice: 77 new emojis are coming, and they include new hair options
Redheads and curly-haired people, the Unicode Consortium has heard your pleas.
Those are just a couple of the 77 new characters approved to be added to Unicode’s next emoji update — 157 new characters if you count the variations in skin tones.
Bald people and people with white hair are the other new hair options. Jeremy Burge, the founder of Emojipedia and a member of the Unicode Consortium — the shadowy organization that approves and encodes emojis — said red hair and curly hair were the most requested new emojis. Like other “people” emojis, they’re available as men and women, and in a variety of skin tones.
In the animals category, you’ll have access to a peacock, a raccoon face, a badger, a hippo, a swan, a kangaroo, a llama, a parrot, a lobster and a mosquito. New food emojis include a mango, leafy greens, a bagel, a mooncake, a cupcake and a salt shaker.
You’ll be able to express whether you’re sweating or freezing cold with two of the new face emojis. There’s also a face with hearts around it — a slightly more low-key alternative to the heart-eyes emoji — and a party face.
There’s a selection of new science-related emojis being added, including a lab coat, goggles, a magnet, a test tube, a petri dish, a microbe and a strand of DNA. Crafters will be able to use a spool of thread, a ball of yarn and a safety pin.
Some one-offs in the new batch: A pirate flag, a roll of toilet paper, a receipt, a firecracker, a suitcase and a jigsaw puzzle piece. Also: a skateboard, which should make Tony Hawk happy.
The new emojis will be part of Unicode 11.0, which is slated to be released in June. It typically takes a few months for companies such as Apple, Google and Microsoft to add new ones to their keyboards: The bacon emoji was announced in June 2016, but it wasn’t available on Android phones until August of that year, and it came to Apple phones that December.
With the new release, there will be more than 2,700 emojis out there. Though it would be difficult for Unicode to remove less-used emojis from the official database — it would create backward-compatibility problems, Burge said — Apple and other companies may choose to take a few off their keyboards in the future if users find the quantity overwhelming. Microsoft already opts to not include the middle finger.
Anyone can submit a proposal for a new emoji to the Unicode Consortium. The mosquito emoji proposal was created by global health advocates from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Johns Hopkins Center for Communication Programs.
“Unicode looks at emoji that can be used in more than one context” when deciding which proposals to approve, Burge said. For instance, the salt shaker can be used for cooking, but also in terms of someone being “salty” — video game slang for being upset or bitter.
One popular request that hasn’t reached fruition yet: a flamingo.
“I get nonstop requests for a flamingo,” Burge said.
There were a few ideas that came close, but didn’t make the cut this time, he said. A face with question marks over the eyes, a face with “O” and “K” over the eyes, and a frowning poop will not be among this year’s new emoji options. But it isn’t necessarily the end of the line for them, Burge said: “Nothing precludes them necessarily from being introduced in future [emoji releases] if things change.” Keep the faith, frowning poop fans.
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