The Unicode Consortium has announced the release of Emoji 12.0, which introduces 59 new emojis including menstruation emoji in its sixth update to the official roster.
The new pack features another 171 variants for gender and skin tones, which means that a total of 230 new emoji will be coming to your smartphone by the second half of the year.
The new update is largely influenced by gender-related experiences and disabilities and it includes emoji for hearing aids, manual and motorized wheelchairs, prosthetic legs and arms, white “probing” canes used by the blind and visually impaired, service dogs, and guide dogs.
One emoji, in particular, is very interesting; the one representing a woman’s period.
According to BBC, the menstruation emoji was among the ones fought for by Plan International U.K., a girls’ rights charity that held an online vote for what such an emoji should look like.
The initial design idea for the emoji was to feature a pair of underwear marked with blood, that idea was rejected by the Unicode Consortium. Maybe they thought it was gross, so, they instead gave it a simple look; a single drop of blood.
Well, now women don’t need to go into lengthy details describing what they are going through. By the end of the second half of 2019, they will simply hit that emoji to tell it all.
Meanwhile, other new emojis in the latest batch includes a yawning face, a person kneeling, a sloth, an otter, an orangutan, a skunk, a flamingo, garlic, a waffle, a falafel, a Hindu temple, ballet shoes, a diya lamp, and many more.
The new emoji will typically start showing up on mobile phones in September or October. However, some platforms may release theirs earlier. The new emoji will soon be available for adoption to help the Unicode Consortium’s work on digitally disadvantaged languages.