The \u2018small penis\u2019 emoji may have garnered all the attention following the announcement of 59 new additions, but many people hope it\u2019s the women\u2019s period emoji, symbolised by a drop of blood, that gets people talking.<\/p>\n

This week, the Unicode Consortium \u2014 the non-profit organisation in charge of creating and maintaining the emoji language standards\u00a0\u2014 announced 59 newcomers<\/a>\u00a0that make up the class of 2019.<\/p>\n

They are designed to more widely reflect members of society, including emojis for men and women in wheelchairs, blind people and guide dogs.<\/p>\n

\n

\n

<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

The drop of blood emoji was promoted by Plan International UK and is intended to help normalise periods, and break down the stigma around them.<\/p>\n

The charity\u2019s campaign<\/a> comes on the back of its 2017 survey, in which it found, among other things, that two-thirds of women do not feel comfortable discussing their periods with their fathers or male friends.<\/p>\n

The survey also found that nearly half of girls aged between 14 and 21 were embarrassed by their periods.<\/p>\n

\u2018With emoji becoming one of the fastest growing global languages, we realised having a period emoji could help change things,\u2019 the charity explained on its website.<\/p>\n

It initially submitted a design that featured a pair of women\u2019s underwear with blood on them.<\/p>\n

Nearly 55,000 people voted for the design, and although that was rejected, the drop of blood, created in partnership with NHS Blood and Transplant, was ultimately included in the February 2019 batch.<\/p>\n

Lucy Russell, head of girls\u2019 rights and youth at the charity, said: \u2018The inclusion of an emoji which can express what 800 million women around the world are experiencing every month is a huge step towards normalising periods and smashing the stigma which surrounds them.<\/p>\n

\u2018For years we\u2019ve obsessively silenced and euphemised periods. As experts in girls\u2019 rights, we know that this has a negative impact on girls; girls feel embarrassed to talk about their periods, they\u2019re missing out, and they can suffer health implications as a consequence.\u2019<\/p>\n

She added: \u2018An emoji isn\u2019t going to solve this, but it can help change the conversation. Ending the shame around periods begins with talking about it.\u2019<\/p>\n

The response on social media has been very positive. One person, commenting on Plan International\u2019s tweet about the news, described the new emoji as \u2018stunning and brave\u2019. Another wrote: \u2018Every step to erase the stigma counts!\u2019<\/p>\n

The new period emoji and the other 58 additions will be released in the second half of 2019.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The \u2018small penis\u2019 emoji may have garnered all the attention following the announcement of 59 new additions, but many people hope it\u2019s the women\u2019s period emoji, symbolised by a drop of blood, that gets people talking. This week, the Unicode Consortium \u2014 the non-profit organisation in charge of creating and maintaining the emoji language standards\u00a0\u2014 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":58411,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"gallery","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-58412","post","type-post","status-publish","format-gallery","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lifestyle","post_format-post-format-gallery"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.metronews.ng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58412","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.metronews.ng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.metronews.ng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.metronews.ng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.metronews.ng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=58412"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.metronews.ng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58412\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.metronews.ng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/58411"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.metronews.ng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58412"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.metronews.ng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58412"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.metronews.ng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58412"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}