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Credit: Google
Your beloved emoji keyboard may be a veritable buffet of dining options and 12 needless variations on the theme of ‘trains’, but something the near universal language of glyphs has long grappled with is increasing racial and gender diversity across the board.
Thankfully, that’s about to change with the introduction of a new set of emoji that represent a wider range of professions for women (and men), including chef, scientist, doctor and for-hire David Bowie impersonator.
In May this year, Google made a pitch to the governing emoji body, the Unicode Technical Committee, to add 11 new professional emoji of both genders and in all skin tones – creating a total of over 100 new options for your boundless self-expression. Overnight, Unicode agreed to the proposed amendments, while also adding male and female versions to 33 pre-existing emoji that for some reasons were needlessly gendered beforehand, like ? and ?.
All new additions will be device agnostic, because what are operating systems if not binary constructs of the patriarchy used to perpetuate systemic disparity between equals?
This coming Sunday July 17 is also World Emoji Day. Stay woke and celebrate appropriately.
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Credit: Google
