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Emojis have become quite diverse over the past few years. In 2015 emojis representing different nationalities was released and people were ecstatic. And in my last blog post, I talked about how gender-neutral emojis are said to be released this year, pleasing the LGBTQ community, but redheads are still being neglected by Apple, is there hope our future emoji keyboard will look a little something like this?
All the different red head emojis said to be released in 2018. Created by Paige Kerr.
Redhead emojis are said to be released in early 2018 to please the two percent of the world's population who proudly rock their red hair. But how will Apple go about incorporating this hairstyle into the emoji keyboard? And why is it that Android has granted this population what they wanted years ago and Apple has not? That's right, the Google Play store for Android devices has unveiled ginger emojis back in 2015 so why is Apple so late to the game? Is Apple redhead phobic!?
According to the British news publication, Mirror, the question still remains how Apple will go about adding this new hair color into their iOS keyboard. Will there be just one man and one women sporting the ginger look? Or will a redhead option be available for all the emojis that represent the six different skin tones? According to Jeremy Burge, founder of Emojipedia, and emoji website, it may not look good for the ginger population, “With a slim 1-2% of the population having red hair, it's yet to be determined if this would justify every emoji having a redhead version made available." Which sounds like pure injustice to me.
"The lack of a redhead emoji has been the most frequent complaint from users in the past three months," stated Burge. But where are these complaints coming from? And where are they gathering their support to stand up to Burge and Emojipedia as a whole? It's from a little website called change.org. change.org has organized a petition, which has since closed, to gather support for their worthy case. Over 21,000 supports have joined and expressed their will to fight to become an emoji. Hugo Davies being one out of 21,000.
Davies, a 21-year-old redhead from East Sussex complained about the hardships redheads face, "Gingers always get a bit of a hard time," And not being recognized by Apple is a prime example. The 21-year-old goes on to say "it's great if we get some positive recognition. I know I'll use it," referring to the redhead emoji. And he is far from being alone with his stance. People are getting increasing annoyed at Apple, one individual took to Twitter to let his anger be known, "Oh great. Another emoji update and still no redhead emoji @AppleSupport I’m looking at you." And celebrities are getting involved. Jessie Tyler Ferguson, an American redhead actor, tweeted out the following
The redhead actor is using his influence to make a change. Mashable
After fighting for over two years, it looks like gingers may finally be granted what they've been demanding. And I truly hope that the redhead emoji is released in the variouis skin tones/hairstyle changing emojis, like it should be. Our future emoji keyboard should look a little something like this.
This is how all iPhone keyboards should look in 2018. Emojipedia.