Why Is There Still No Redhead Emoji for iPhone?
On October 31, Apple shared a developer preview of the latest round of emoji for iPhone updates set for the iOS 10.2 update, and plenty of them are great. In addition to the sure to be popular "facepalm" emoji — which, not to nitpick, sort of looks like it involves a second person's hand doing the palming? — there's an avocado, a shark, and an added array of career-related emojis including firefighter, artist and scientist for both genders. Many of the human emojis are available in five skin/hair tones, as they should be, reflecting the very large cultural cross section of people who need to text picture-driven narratives involving avatars that actually resemble them.
Just one question: Why is there STILL no redhead emoji for iPhone?
When it comes to underrepresentation, I'll be the first to admit that crying "gingerism!" is absurd: The five existing skin/hair options only begin to reflect humanity's rich palette of melanin, to say nothing of eye color and rainbow-dyed hair hues (though there are male and female David Bowie/Ziggy Stardust options in iOS 10.2, with cool pink or blue hair). And for the over-65 set, your grey-haired options currently begin and end at the "Mrs. Claus" glasses-and-bun combo for women and "why, that old schoolhouse burned down 40 YEARS ago!" bald mustachioed geezer for men. The wish list for emoji improvements is potentially endless, and you might say, "But Samantha, that's what Bitmoji is for!"
And fair enough. And if I need to text an image of a giant bong, I have Amber Rose's Muvamoji for that too, but I'm not trying to exhaust my keyboard-shuffling thumb. App developers Swyft Media heeded the call from redheaded luminaries like Modern Family's Jesse Tyler Ferguson and released a "ginger emoji keyboard" for iPhone in June 2015. Unfortunately, they're hideous. And weirdly enormous.
Less than 2% of the world's population was born with red hair, but so many people dye their hair red! What is the developers' aversion to orange or auburn? How is it so hard to add one more face to the expandable menu? I'm choosing to blame the same unnamed monster who decided to make the new peach emoji less butt-like. Meanwhile I, along with Lindsay Lohan, Amy Adams, Emma Stone, Jessica Chastain, Julianne Moore, Nicole Kidman, Christina Hendricks, Bryce Dallas Howard, Rupert Grint, Ed Sheeran, Carrot Top, that kid from Problem Child, Chucky the evil doll, Melisandre from Game of Thrones, Pippi Longstocking and Syndrome from The Incredibles will wait right here with slowly-increasing disappointment.
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