Facebook Messenger announced on Wednesday that a whoooooole bunch of new emoji will be coming to the popular messaging app on Thursday, June 2 (that’s tomorrow!) — among which are some much-needed gender diverse options. But what are the new Facebook Messenger women emoji, exactly? Which emoji, hitherto only representative of men, will soon be representative of women? The bad news is that there aren’t a lot of them; the good news, though, is that there are more on the way. I have high hopes, y’all. High hopes, indeed.
The new emoji, which will also include the racially diverse options that were such a victory back when they arrived in 2015, were announced in a post on the Messenger Facebook page earlier today, with the goal being to “make emojis more representative of the world we live in.” As the post notes, emoji have changed the way we communicate — but unfortunately, not all platforms have kept up. Not only are we sometimes not able to find the emoji that mean exactly what we want to say, but more importantly, they often aren’t “living up to the gender and skin tone diversity that we see in our world every day.”
To that end, over 1,500 newly designed Messenger emoji will be making their debut tomorrow — including emoji that “[diversify] the genders to create a more balanced mix that’s more representative of our world,” reads the post. “Now, using Messenger emojis, you’ll see a female police officer, runner, pedestrian, surfer, and swimmer for the very first time, and we’ll keep rolling these out.”
And that’s where the answer to the “what are they?” question is hiding: Right now, we’ve got five to start, and more are on the way. If you scrutinize this image, which the Messenger page included in its post announcing the emoji, you can see all of them:
The police officer is in the upper left corner, the jogger right above the “O” in “power,” the swimmer on the bottom row below the bunny ear girl, the walker to the left of the swimmer, and the surfer on the left hand side right next to the word “Girl.” Cool, right?
There are a few drawbacks; according to BuzzFeed, the emoji will still look like men on the keyboard, although when you actually use them, they'll display as women. Additionally, five is... kind of a tiny number. But it's a start, and I can’t wait to see what else is on the way.
For the curious, here’s what those five emoji have looked like up til this point, when our only options were dudes:
1. The Pedestrian Emoji
Used to indicate walking (or possible plodding along, or encouraging people to slow the heck down), the Pedestrian emoji is typically depicted wearing blue pants and a red shirt. The emoji’s wardrobe choice will not apparently change, from the sneak peek Messenger has given us.
2. The Runner Emoji
The Runner (or “jogger,” if you prefer) emoji is basically the same as the Pedestrian emoji; it’s even wearing the same outfit. It’s just moving along at a faster clip than its walking counterpart.
3. The Police Officer Emoji
The hat really says it all, doesn’t it?
4. The Swimmer Emoji
To be fair, the Swimmer emoji is wearing a swim cap, which honestly makes it almost gender neutral. This version of the emoji, though, is definitely coded “masculine” in shape.
5. The Surfer Emoji
This version of the Surfer emoji looks somewhat concerned. I kind of dig that the new Facebook Messenger one looks like she’s having the time of her life.
Images: Messenger/Facebook; Emojipedia (5)
