A Hijab-Wearing Emoji Might Finally Happen Thanks to One Muslim Teen
As the enthusiasm over new emojis featuring women of all skin tones playing sports and portraying a wide range of professions shows, representation matters. Rayouf Alhumedhi knows this. That's why, frustrated by emoji options that didn't look like her, she created a formal proposal for hijab-wearing emojis to Unicode Consortium, which sets the standards for symbols on keyboards.
"In the age of digitalization, pictures prove to be a crucial element in communication," the proposal says. "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."
Alhumedi, a Saudi Arabia–born teen now attending high school in Germany, first emailed Apple and got no response. Then she emailed Unicode Consortium (the same group responsible for welcoming those new emojis for women) and caught the attention of reporter Jennifer 8. Lee, who, after suggesting Alhumedi include more history on the hijab and research, co-authored the proposal.
"We need to be represented with the amount of diversity, the amount of difference in this world," she told The New York Times. Alhumedi also hosted a Reddit discussion on Tuesday to answer questions. "I would like to be represented and acknowledged," she in response to inquiries that the hijab was "oppressive." "It might seem baffling, but when I wear the head scarf I actually feel liberated because I'm in control of what I want to cover. The head scarf allows for people to see past a woman's beauty and see her for her knowledge."
She is flying to the Bay Area in California to present a final proposal to Unicode's technical committee in November. The proposal has since focused on just the female design, and if it's approved it would be accepted into Unicode 10 and adopted by fall 2017. Check out the full proposal below:
Draft: Headscarf Emoji Proposal by rayouf on Scribd
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