Ed Sheeran and Prince Harry fans of the world, rejoice! We could be about to get a redhead emoji, along with bald, curly and white-haired ones, if a proposed update gets the go-ahead.
Jeremy Burge from emoji search engine Emojipedia posted a series of tweets sharing some of the possible designs, alongside celebrity “representatives” of each hair style.
In Emojipedia's proposal for the designs to be included in next year's emoji release, the emoji are described as "appearances that aren’t currently supported in the informal skin tone/hair colour pairings used by many vendors".
I know a lot is going on rn but redhead is now an emoji candidate for next Unicode release + bald, curly, white hair https://t.co/Tfc2xOSA5F pic.twitter.com/D9ZVbhDavs
— Jeremy Burge ? (@jeremyburge) May 17, 2017
Redheads ? pic.twitter.com/sjHbGRLJ3m
— Jeremy Burge ? (@jeremyburge) May 17, 2017
White hair emoji examples pic.twitter.com/20cyQdAqKu
— Jeremy Burge ? (@jeremyburge) May 17, 2017
Curly hair emoji examples pic.twitter.com/EZAWH34oIl
— Jeremy Burge ? (@jeremyburge) May 17, 2017
Bald / no hair / shaven head examples. If approved in final set, these would support genders + skin tones. ~2018 pic.twitter.com/VSKzV2Hn8g
— Jeremy Burge ? (@jeremyburge) May 17, 2017
Emojipedia Sample Images by @mindfad ??? pic.twitter.com/gD4jNc5nQH
— Jeremy Burge ? (@jeremyburge) May 17, 2017
These are just early designs and Unicode's final emoji could end up looking pretty different, but we've no doubt that redheads around the world will be chuffed with the proposal.
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A redhead emoji has been one of the most requested additions to our keypads, with more than 21,000 people having signed a petition two years ago to bring it to fruition.
"Redheads. In all their glorious gingerness, they've been missed out. Again. If you say you're going to diversify, why not add a few red-haired emoji in the mix?" read the petition to Apple and the Unicode Consortium.
"Natural redheads may be rare at less than 2% of the world's population, but that is 138,000,000 iPhones waiting to happen."
Redhead emoji have been available via the Google Play Store for Android since 2015, but until now the Unicode Consortium has been less sympathetic to ginger equality campaigners.