As the popularity of texting skyrockets, so does the population of emojis that inhabit the techno-sphere.
Not exactly sure what an emoji is?
Don’t worry—it’s a term used most liberally among the teen set. An emoji is, in its most basic form, a smiley face, like this:
Of course, emojis run the gamut of expressions these days and even include limitless other varieties of people, places, and things.
For instance, “I’m in the mood for pizza,” could be summed up like so:
With such a plethora of modern pictorial shorthand out there, it comes as a bit of a surprise that the emojis representing women and girls are, in a word, dated.
“When it comes to emojis, women can be brides or princesses, paint their fingernails, get a haircut, and go dancing in a red dress. If those sound like roles determined by the patriarchy, well, it’s not a new complaint,” writes Karen Workman of the New York Times. “But it may be changing. Google wants to add 13 emojis to represent women, and their male counterparts, in professional roles.”
A recent proposal from a team of Google employees was submitted to the Unicode Consortium, an organization responsible for the approval and subsequent web-wide unleashing of emojis.
According to Workman, “The proposed emojis include women in business and health care roles, at factories and on farms, among other things. Google wants the organization to approve them by year’s end, but the process of getting new emojis onto keyboards is a long one.”
(Who knew the world of silly smiley faces could be so convoluted?)
But, let’s back up a few paces … did you read what I read?
Yup—women on farms.
A farmgirl emoji!
Awww, just look at her:
Rumor has it, she’ll have her own tractor emoji too, and we’ll be on the lookout for both later this year.
In the meantime, watch this video by the folks at Always to glean a dash of enlightenment about the potential power of the humble emoji …
