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New emojis are always fun! These are particularly exciting. Among them there's the trans flag, a woman in a tuxedo, and a gender-neutral alternative to Santa Claus.
Over 100 new characters and images have been approved for addition to the emoji library, the Unicode Consortium announced. The 2020 list also includes a person in a veil, as well as emoji for bubble tea, and a person bottle-feeding a baby.
Last year, a number of same-sex couple and gender-neutral emojis were added to the library to improve representation, but there was criticism over the non-inclusion of the trans flag. So, we're excited to see they've added that to the list.
The Unicode Consortium's list is the central bank of approved emojis, including Apple, Google and Microsoft, who then apply stylized versions of the designs to their own operating systems.
“Announced today by the Unicode Consortium, the 117 new emojis form part of Emoji 13.0 and will come to most platforms in the second half of 2020," the website Emojipedia released. “Variations of existing emojis now approved for 2020 include a woman or gender-inclusive person in a tuxedo, as well as a gender-neutral person or a man in a veil. These, along with other approved emojis, will be coming to phones later this year. Also included in this update is a gender-inclusive alternative to Santa Claus and Mrs Claus, named Mx Claus. This addition is part of an ongoing effort to make more consistent set of gender options across the board, and expands upon the 138 new gender-neutral emojis added in late 2019 as part of Emoji 12.1."
Emojipedia noted that some versions of the new emoji, including the trans flag and the woman in a tuxedo, are already available on Twitter.
Twitter is loving it!
“Taking action to make tools of communication, like emojis, more inclusive and diverse is always a welcome step," Jeff Ingold, head of media engagement at LGBT campaigns group Stonewall, said. “So we're glad to see the inclusion of more gender-neutral emojis and a trans flag emoji. Visibility is really important and companies can always be thinking of more ways to promote trans equality."
Also among the list of approved emoji is a ninja, a pinched finger gesture, a seal, a bison and a dodo.
No release dates have been confirmed for the emojis on different operating systems, although they are traditionally rolled out later in the year when new versions of Apple's iOS and Google's Android software are released to the public.