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2020’s new emoji include the transgender flag and more gender-inclusive options

2020’s new emoji include the transgender flag and more gender-inclusive options

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Unicode Consortium will roll out 117 new emoji later this year

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Image: Emojipedia

The Unicode Consortium has revealed 117 new emoji that will be rolled out later this year as part of Emoji 13.0. There are 62 new emoji and 55 new gender and skin tone variants of emoji, including more gender-inclusive options. Some of them look really fun — I already can’t wait to troll my friends with the smiling face with a tear, the face with glasses and a mustache, the ninja, and the cockroach.

Here’s an image from Emojipedia that approximates what all the new emoji might look like when they’re released on devices and services. Exactly when the new emoji are released is up to each individual vendor, but in previous years, the new emoji have typically rolled out in the fall, and that seems like a reasonable expectation for this year as well.

Image: Emojipedia

There are new inclusive emoji options in this year’s lineup. There’s a transgender flag emoji on the way (the proposal for which was sponsored by Google and Microsoft), as well as an emoji for the transgender symbol. And Google, which has led the charge in introducing more gender-inclusive emoji, also proposed the all-gender options for the “person in veil” emoji (right now, that emoji only portrays a woman) and “person in tuxedo” emoji (which currently only portrays a man). There’s also a new all-gender “person feeding baby with a bottle” emoji that was proposed by Google, which will give people of all genders a way to communicate that they are feeding a baby.

Proposing emoji isn’t just limited to Google and Microsoft, though — anyone can submit a proposal. If you want to learn a little bit about the process, you can read about my journey proposing the waffle and yawning face emoji right here.