We’ve got ginger emojis, we’ve got ethnically diverse emojis and now people are calling on tech giants to implement the world’s first vagina emoji.
In celebration of Sexual Health Week, women’s health tech company Elvie has submitted two new emojis to the Unicode Consortium, which is the governing body behind emojis.
If you’ve ever engaged in a little bit of light flirting on social media, you’ll probably have received (and used) the taco emoji, the peach emoji and the egg plant emoji to represent various different parts of the human anatomy.
However, Elvie doesn’t think this is good enough, so has created two brand new emojis. The first shows a pink vulva, while a second shows the full female reproductive system.
As per the Mirror, Tania Boler, CEO and founder of Elvie said:
For centuries, women’s health has been plagued by misconceptions and stigma.
We should be able to talk openly about our bodies and womanhood.
Emoji is a universal language used all over the world and it’s about time that language had a symbol for the vulva.
The female anatomy emojis come after a period emoji was given the green light from the Unicode Consortium.
The move follows a campaign led by Plan International UK, which saw more than 55,000 join in on calls for a period emoji to be added to the global emoji keyboard.
Plan International UK hopes that the emoji will help to break down the stigma surrounding periods.
Meanwhile, how you actually use emojis could be affecting your life more than you think, after one study found that people who use more emojis generally have more sex.
Researchers at the Kinsey Institute surveyed more than 5,000 for the annual Singles In America paper and they found a direct correlation between emojis and sex.
Specifically, the researchers concluded that those who punctuate their messages with the symbols are more likely to have a second date, kiss their dates and have a higher number of sexual partners.
The study reads:
Modern relationship-seekers must master faster and shorter methods of communicating self-disclosure and affect.
We find that the use of emojis allows daters to communicate important affective information to potential partners which facilitates successful intimate connection and more romantic and sexual opportunities.
The reason being, the study cites, that when we meet people on a face-to-face basis, we rely on more than just the words spoken to us, to develop relationships. Often facial expressions and other body language factors are required to develop intimacy with a partner.
Who knows what this could mean with the addition of a vagina emoji…
If you have a story you want to tell send it to UNILAD via story@unilad.com
Emma Rosemurgey is an NCTJ trained Journalist who started her career by producing The Royal Rosemurgey newspaper in 2004, which kept her family up to date with the goings on of her sleepy north east village. She graduated from the University of Central Lancashire in Preston and started her career in regional newspapers before joining Tyla (formerly Pretty 52) in 2017, and progressing onto UNILAD in 2019.