The New Emoji Bring Much-Needed Good News

If you're finding yourself at a loss for words after this election, then worry not — the Unicode Consortium just announced that it has approved 56 new emojis for its Unicode 10 release. The new emojis will include some that seem much-needed in our post-election landscape, include an image of a person wearing a hijab and a breastfeeding emoji. When will the new emojis come out? Hopefully, the Unicode Consortium won't leave people without the "banging head against wall" emoji for too long.

According to the Unicode Technical Committee, users can expect the new emojis to be hitting their phones in June 2017. Though it's a bit of a wait, it will definitely be worth it. In addition to Unicode providing the hijab and breastfeeding emojis, others that will surely come in handy during the four years of a Trump presidency include a barfing emoji, an unamused face, and an emoji with black hair swept to one side (a personal favorite that describes my current mood, while also harkening back to my more angst-ridden teenage years).

Users will also be able to get their love of food across a bit easier, too — the new batch will include a dumpling, sandwich, and coconut.

But all silliness of emojis aside, the 56 images that made the cut help provide context to an increasingly nonverbal world, so fortunately, it seems that Unicode has been paying attention. What's even cooler is that we'll be getting the hijab emoji thanks to Rayouf Alhumedhi, a Muslim teenager who saw the lack of representation on the keyboard and set out to make a change. She contacted the Unicode Consortium with her proposal, and after a successful pitch to the group earlier this week, the emoji was officially approved.

In her formal proposal, Alhumedhi made this argument for the new emoji: "In the age of digitalization, pictures prove to be a crucial element in communication. Roughly 550 million Muslim women on this earth pride themselves on wearing the hijab. With this enormous number of people, not a single space on the keyboard is reserved for them."

This clearly comes at a time when this representation matters more than ever. In just a few months, millions of users will get to see themselves more clearly reflected in their everyday communications. Even if the rest of the election week has left us feeling defeated, we can at least take that as some definite good news.