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New emojis to include hijab, breastfeeding, yoga

The consortium that approves emojis has signed off new ones, including a woman wearing a hijab, woman breastfeeding a baby…

New emojis to include hijab, breastfeeding, yoga

(Getty Images)

The consortium
that approves emojis has signed off new ones, including a woman wearing a
hijab, woman breastfeeding a baby and a person doing yoga.

The new emojis are likely to arrive on smartphones
next year after Unicode, the international consortium that sets their global
standards, proposed the 51 icons.

It will take the total number of the cartoon
images, which are increasingly being used to replace words in text messages, to
1,724, The Telegraph reported.

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Rayouf Alhumedhi, a 15-year-old from Germany, had
campaigned for the inclusion of the character wearing a hijab emoji, proposing
it to Unicode after realising there was no emoji to represent her.

Among the list of introductions are ‘person with
headscarf’, ‘breastfeeding’, ‘bearded person’, ‘older adult’, reflecting the
current lack of grandparent icons.

Other emojis that will be released in 2017 by
Unicode are a head exploding, a face with open mouth vomiting and a man and
woman practising yoga, The Guardian reported.

The new list, Unicode 10, adds to efforts to make
emojis more diverse. Smartphone makers have included a variety of skin tones,
hair colours and cultural and religious references in recent years following
claims that they reinforce stereotypes.

Google recently called for more emojis that
reflect women in the workplace, while Apple added male and female versions of
some emojis after complaints that many of the female- focused cartoons featured
activities such as cutting hair.

Alhumedhi, whose own proposal was accepted by
Unicode, tweeted that she was “so excited” by the news.

The other new emojis proposed include a zombie, a
vampire, a person holding their finger to their mouth, and a T-Rex.

Unicode, which represents the major technology
companies, proposed a shortlist of the new emojis. They are typically approved
in the following summer and are likely to be added to smartphones in roughly a
year’s time.

In the coming weeks, Apple is set to add the
emojis from the previous set, Unicode 9. They include emojis for facepalm,
selfie, a clown and a pregnant woman.

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