Google’s New Genderqueer Emoji Have Great Hair

Back in the day, emoji were but simple yellow circles bearing facial expressions. A smile, a frown, a silly stuck-out tongue. It was a language of pure emotion. Then people started designating these tiny pictographs “male” or “female”, and adding bad hair to everything.

Numerous emoji now have male and female versions, allowing users to wave in flat-haired woman or shrug in helmet-haired man. However, while assigning emoji genders widens our options in some ways, it also cuts non-binary and genderqueer people from the conversation. Now, Google is making an effort to be more inclusive of gender diversity in their emoji design.

Earlier this week, the company released a beta of 53 new agender emoji on Pixel phones, with plans to bring them to phones running Android Q later in the year. The new designs, which include a merperson, a judge and the all-important shrug, depict a genderqueer person sporting the best head of hair I’ve ever seen on an emoji.

omg google made a nonbinary vampire emoji..thats me pic.twitter.com/oYJNjcq1bC

— ?*hands u a sea slug* @finals (@finnmertens) May 10, 2019

Look at that swept coiffure, that casual side part, that careless lick of hair curling to the sky. A cut long enough to run your fingers through but short enough to be practical, with loose curls falling to frame the neck. As first reported by Fast Company, this hairstyle was the result of multiple drafts and redesigns to get it just right. It shows.

“It is an impossible task to communicate gender in a single image. It’s a construct. It lives dynamically on a spectrum,” said Google designer Jennifer Daniel, speaking to Fast Company. “I personally don’t believe there is one visual design solution at all, but I do believe to avoid it is the wrong approach here. We can’t avoid race, gender, any other number of things in culture and class. You have to stare it in the face in order to understand it.”

I personally have been staring it in the face for several minutes now.

S/o to Google for not only making a gender fluid emoji
and also making it the hottest emoji pic.twitter.com/qNmkU3w5VS

— Paul Currrrrrrrr- (@MiddleSkoolGoku) May 10, 2019

Daniel further spoke to Fast Company about how increasing specificity in emoji design can lead to unintentional exclusion, and Google’s efforts to roll it back even regarding matters unrelated to gender. She gave the example of a “hug” emoji currently being considered for approval: Two bald blue silhouettes embracing each other under arm and over shoulder.

“This proposal is an example of how we’re thinking of emoji design right now, to take as much detail as possible out of it,” said Daniel. “That hug can be a bear hug. It can be an ‘I’m sorry to hear that’ hug. It can be an ‘I’m going on a plane and will see you when I get off’ hug.”

Simple, clear and free of terrible haircuts. The way emoji are meant to be.