Oops, I Forgot To Feel Microaggressed Over The Lack Of Redheaded Emojis
There has been such deplorable discrimination against those of us verrrry white of flesh and red of head.
Yes, growing up, the only dolls that looked like me were Raggedy Ann and Andy. (This, of course, is the reason I grew up to rob liquor stores and run a meth lab.)
Jess Zimmerman, on the beat of the tough issues for The Guardian, points out, "People of color have only had 'turban guy' for years. It's only fair that white people should learn to navigate a world where the only emoji princess has brown skin."
But let's see the sad state of emoji-affairs we've been dealing with. As Jess puts it:
Apple's emoji keyboard has a number of notable omissions: avocado, bed, taco, levitating businessman. But by far the most glaring imperfection, as emoji become more and more indispensable to the daily texting habits of sexy people, has been the overwhelming whiteness of all the little cartoon people. With two exceptions - a man in a turban, and another who seems to be coded as Chinese based on his hat - every emoji human or human part, from haircut woman to flexing arm to Santa Claus, is Caucasian-pink. At least, so far.
Luckily -- all hail! -- emoji-color is upon us!
With the next iOS upgrade, it seems this may finally change. Last year, the Unicode Consortium, which develops the Unicode Standard from which iPhone and other emoji draw, announced that more diverse emoji were on the way. Now, beta versions of updated Mac and iOS operating systems show how the new icons will look and how they'll operate: hold down on any human emoji, and you'll bring up a menu of different color options based on the Fitzpatrick scale of skin tone.
For me, of course, the real problem is grown adults communicating in tiny cartoon figures.
Gregg's been on this neighborhood committee, and they all were texting emojis back and forth. Love him -- he finally texted back a string of random emojis: A skier, the same skier, a trophy, etc. (They're all probably still trying to figure it out.)
My kinda guy.
There's a petition and entire movement for redheaded emojis:
https://www.change.org/p/apple-redheads-should-have-emoji-too
Snoopy at December 3, 2015 4:20 AM
I was actually quite annoyed growing up at the lack of brown haired brown eyed dolls... often when there's a line of multiethnic dolls they figure that the brown eyes have been covered by the black, hispanic and asian dolls, so they give the brown haired white doll green eyes.
Which is idiotic because white with brown hair and eyes is very common.
NicoleK at December 3, 2015 4:38 AM
This, of course, is the reason I grew up to rob liquor stores and run a meth lab.
Jesus. Our blog hostess is Heisenburg?
I R A Darth Aggie at December 3, 2015 7:04 AM
I hate emojis. I even hate the name "emoji."
ahw at December 3, 2015 7:15 AM
"For me, of course, the real problem is grown adults communicating in tiny cartoon figures."
This. It stuns me that the Unicode Consortium is actually burning up R&D money of the companies that support them on emojis. What a waste of time. If you don't like existing emojis, make your own. How hard can it be? It's not like you're copying a Manet.
And yeah, we are abandoning alphabets and going back to hieroglyphics. It happened in cars a long time ago Now, when you see a little squiggly symbol light up in your speedometer, you think, "OK, does that mean that the rear window heat is on, or that a tail light is out, or that the engine is overheating?" Making the world safe for illiteracy.
Cousin Dave at December 3, 2015 7:15 AM
"Now, when you see a little squiggly symbol..."
I groan at the willful ignorance of the American on a regular basis, and I had this confirmed a couple of years ago, when Tom & Ray Magliozzi were still doing Car Talk.
Two people, weeks apart, called in to wonder why, when they put the turn signal in one direction, it flashed faster on that side than the other (if you don't know what causes this, shame on you for not being a real American - who knows about cars, the quintessential American icon and the indication in California of which of the six opposite sexes you might be).
Neither stepped out of the car to look at the actual signals.
Each waited weeks to call a radio show to ask.
Radwaste at December 3, 2015 7:25 AM
"Grown adults"?
lenona at December 3, 2015 8:04 AM
"Grown Adults?" - lenona
I may be 51 years old. I may be married and have a child. But by no means do I consider myself "grown up."
Fayd at December 3, 2015 9:09 AM
Actually, my point was that you CAN'T say "grown adults." It's not grammatically correct, being a redundancy. One can, of course, say "mature adults," since there is no shortage of immature adults. But "grown" and "mature" are not identical.
So what DO you say if you don't mean "mature adults"? Just "adults" should work well enough.
lenona at December 5, 2015 10:48 AM
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