Some days, especially those some days of the month where you’re feeling down, the rolling eye emoji and the knife can perhaps symbolise how your uterus is stabbing you from the inside. But it’s not enough. We have perhaps at some point felt that there could have been just that one emoji to sum it up. And now it’s here: The period emoji.
The Emoji 12.0 update has been finalized, which means you will soon be able to add value to your conversations with friends and family with even more emojis. There are 59 new emojis as well as 171 variants for gender and skin tone, which makes this a total of 230 new emojis that have been approved for release.
But of all of these, the one that stands out is the period emoji. The emoji itself is shaped like a drop, and unabashedly red in color. None of that sanitary napkins depicted with blue liquid mirage. It’s big, bloody and real. The arrival of the e-sticker follows the calls of more than 55,000 people for the introduction of a period emoji, which was led by global girl’s rights charity Plan International UK, reports Vogue.
“The inclusion of an emoji which can express what 800 million women around the world are experiencing every month is a huge step towards normalizing periods and smashing the stigma which surrounds them,” said Lucy Russell, head of girls rights and youth at Plan International UK.
We are thrilled to announce that we are actually getting a #PeriodEmoji!
It is through your support that we can now celebrate that the @unicode have announced that we will get our first ever #PeriodEmoji in March 2019 đ
Find out more here â¶https://t.co/dKd4WwEShX pic.twitter.com/CdyG5fapAx
— PlanInternational UK (@PlanUK) February 6, 2019
The design for the period emoji comes after a survey in 2017 where Plan International UK actively asked users to vote on what the emoji should look like. And the Internet answered – so we finally have our much awaited period emoji.
If you’re still wondering why we need a period emoji, here’s summing it up for you. It’s 2019, and we should not be hiding a perfectly natural and normally occurring body process or be ashamed of depicting it. An emoji is a very small step in the larger idea of periods being normalized in society at large, but it certainly makes it easier to start conversations to bring about that change.
The other emojis coming along are also all about inclusion. There are emojois for people with disabilities, like wheelchairs, hearing-aids, prosthetic limbs and guide dogs. There’s also emojis on temples, auto rickshaws and sarees for the Indian souls.
Maybe 2019 is the year where we can express our true selves and not be limited, at least, over text messages. The emojis are set to roll out soon on Androids and Apple devices.
But for now, we give the period emoji, a thumbs up.