The Unicode Consortium may finally be forced to address that many people do not have pin-straight hair — or hair at all. A proposal submitted to the Consortium, which is responsible for approving all new emoji, requests the addition of men and women with red hair, white hair, curly hair, and bald heads.
Jeremy Burge, the founder of all-things-emoji site Emojipedia, authored the proposal. To illustrate his case, he includes examples of relevant pop culture figures such as Jessica Chastain, Anderson Cooper, Kit Harrington, and Samuel L Jackson.
As Emojipedia has previously noted, it would be relatively easy for the Unicode Consortium to add a man or woman with red or curly hair. Where it gets trickier is when you have to consider which emoji will get these new hairstyles and colors. Will the female gymnast come with straight red hair and curly red hair options for every skin tone? That would require new coding and take much longer to put in place.
But the bare basics that the proposal suggests — male and female options for curly, red, and white hair and bald heads across skin tones — would be a good start. Unfortunately, don't expect to see these additions, if approved, until 2018, when they could be considered for Unicode 11.0. In the meantime, quench your thirst for new emoji by looking at the exploding head, mermaid, and remaining 67 characters coming later this year.