For iPhone users, the recent iOS 12.1 software has recently been updated and along with that new software came an emoji with red hair! Finally! The past iPhone software has represented all hair colors as you could choose between blonde hair, brown hair, dark brown hair, and black hair. You can also choose between different shades of skin colors among these emojis, but there still was never the option to make your emoji have red hair. I'm not sure if it was a redheaded Apple employee that decided this emoji was necessary or if Apple just finally realized that us redheads around the world didn't have an emoji to look like us! Either way, I'm grateful!
I've seen a lot of buzz about the new redhead emoji throughout social media. Obviously, all the posts I've seen about the emoji update has come from other redheads because we're that excited about this. Although this new emoji is exciting, a lot of people have had their complaints about it because red hair is only an option on one single emoji. You can find multiple emojis in which you can change their hair color, but red hair is just one single emoji (well, two if you consider the male and female emojis to be two different). Either way, red hair is not an option on any of the other people emojis, red hair is simply its own emoji. This can be looked at as a bad thing or under-representation, but I don't look at it like that. I look at it as a little representation is better than no representation.
Sure, it's only an emoji, but any iPhone users, or any users of technology that have emojis for that matter, can easily say that they use emojis on a regular basis. Emojis are a basis to the way most people communicate now, or at least young people. We use emojis to represent an array of words. It's just so easy to send a laughing/crying face or sending heart eyes, or whatever emoji it is that you use, it's just too easy. We use emojis to make up for the words that we don't know how to express. So, maybe it's not only an emoji. That's why it's a big deal that us redheads have finally gotten an emoji.
The lack of red hair representation in the emoji world has finally been changed. And although a lot of people may have complaints because they want even more emojis with red hair, just look at it as redheads are one of a kind, so we get our OWN emoji. You can also look at the fact that we've never had a red hair emoji until now as positive. Having red hair is something that sets us apart from other people and it's such a rare hair color that it took Apple this long to finally come up with this new emoji. We're so rare that not even Apple could keep up. That's how I look at it!
Even if you never end up using the emoji, which most people won't because unless you have red hair, the iOS update was just another "bug fix" update for you, it's still pretty cool to us redheads to brag about the fact that we now have an emoji. iPhones have been a thing since 2007 and it took Apple 18 iPhone models and X amount of software updates to finally show us redheads some love. It may just be a little thing, but I know for me, as a redheaded emoji user, I'm pretty excited and have already used the red hair emoji an unnecessary amount of times.