Tech

New Breastfeeding Emoji Might Soon Enter Your Messenger List; More New Icons Coming Soon?

Jai Sabharwal
First Posted: Oct 19, 2016 05:59 AM EDT

Soon there could be a new emoji representing breastfeeding moms. A proposal to Unicode, the company that handles new emoji icons, has been reported to add in a breastfeeding character to the emoji list in messengers. The organization is soon to discuss whether such a character be added to the list or not.

There are also reports on consideration of a few more icons such as mermaid, coconut, almond, climber, pie, and a meditating person.

An official nurse named, Rachel Lee, was the one who submitted a breastfeeding emoji to Unicode. Rachel, who works at University College of London Hospital, was quoted saying that the character would, "fill a gap in the current standard which omits the most popular form of nutrition for newborn babies." 

She also told that CDC is estimating around 3 million moms to take part in breastfeeding activity in the U.S. at a decided time. She further stated that Google's data suggests that "breastfeeding" is a widely used term, even more than "bottle feeding."

According to Unicode, the Breastfeeding Emoji was reported to be the "most requested emoji" in the year 2016. And, the organization approves the character, it will get its own set of skin tones just like other characters.

The other characters planned to be added are also going to be discussed in the upcoming meeting in November. On approval, all the new characters will be added to Unicode 10.0 update later in mid-2017. Besides, the above-stated characters, there are also rumors of addition of a dumpling, an orange heart, a curling stone, and a one eyebrow-raised face.

There are more characters coming up soon and all these are to be discussed in the meeting coming up this November 2016. But, that will be decided once the proposals are reviewed. To approve any of these characters, a voting session will be held among the organization members which will decide their fate. 

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