Home » Rejoice! New Emojis Are Coming (Including A Transgender Flag, 55 Gender & Skin Tone Variants And Bubble Tea!)

31 January, 2020

Rejoice! New Emojis Are Coming (Including A Transgender Flag, 55 Gender & Skin Tone Variants And Bubble Tea!)

If you don’t get excited about the prospect of new emojis to spam your friends and family with, perhaps it’s time to reassess your life (especially when it’s a wave of more diverse and inclusive emojis).

As announced on Wednesday, the Unicode Consortium, a non-profit that standardizes languages across digital platforms and devices, will be launching 62 new emoji.

Some of the emojis include a transgender flag, emoji of 55 gender and skin-tone variants, a polar bear, a teapot, and boba (or bubble tea as we call it in Oz).

The Unicode Consortium has spent the past few years working on creating more diverse and inclusive emojis in response to criticism about how long it’s taken to address the lack of diversity in the little animated characters.

And, while you might be wondering how boba address diversity, it’s essentially the non-profits way of making emoji more inclusive in subtle ways by representing different cultures (boba is often associated with Asian American culture).

Tea Uglow, how helped co-author the proposal for the emoji said: “For trans folk being able to say ‘transgender’ in emoji and to be out and proud and let our allies visibly support us is a huge deal for our community.

“We’re really happy to have finally crossed into mainstream culture. It’s been an amazing team effort around the world.”

While you might have to wait until September to start using the new emojis, we think it’s a push in the right direction for a more diverse and inclusive world.

Pssst – speaking of diversity and inclusion, do you have your tickets to B&T‘s upcoming Changing the Ratio event?

The business case for diversity has well and truly been made. For the media and marketing industry, we know ads that reflect the world we live in produce better business results. But the question is no longer why… it’s how. B&T believes it’s because realism cultivates a sense of belonging. And, belonging is not just a way to drive inclusivity in our industry, it’s how we propel society forward.

B&T Changing the Ratio brings the Australian industry together to overcome biases (gender, cultural, age, disability and more), and discuss how we can create a more effective and innovative communications industry by reminding and showing individuals they belong. Get your tickets here.

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