We're getting a period emoji and it's bloody brilliant news
It's happening. We're definitely getting a period emoji.
Unicode has confirmed the period emoji has been given the go-ahead and will hit keyboards in spring 2019.
The blood drop emoji is the result of a campaign led by girls' rights group Plan International UK backed by 55,000 people, which set out to smash the silence and stigma surrounding menstruation by bringing a period emoji to global smartphone keyboards.
Lucy Russell, Head of Girls' Rights & Youth at Plan International UK, says the period 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."
"For years we’ve obsessively silenced and euphemised periods," says Russell. "As experts in girls’ rights, we know that this has a negative impact on girls; girls feel embarrassed to talk about their periods, they’re missing out, and they can suffer health implications as a consequence."
Russell says that an emoji won't necessarily solve the issue surrounding period stigma and silence, but it will "help change the conversation" and end "the shame around periods."
Carmen Barlow, digital strategy and development manager at Plan International UK, says emoji play an important role in "our digital and emotional vocabulary, transcending cultural and country barriers."
"A period emoji can help normalise periods in everyday conversation," says Barlow. "For an organisation like Unicode to recognise that menstruation should be represented in this new global language is a huge step towards breaking down a global culture of shame around periods."
Topics Activism
Rachel Thompson is the Features Editor at Mashable. Rachel's second non-fiction book The Love Fix: Reclaiming Intimacy in a Disconnected World is out now, published by Penguin Random House in Jan. 2025. The Love Fix explores why dating feels so hard right now, why we experience difficult emotions in the realm of love, and how we can change our dating culture for the better.
A leading sex and dating writer in the UK, Rachel has written for GQ, The Guardian, The Sunday Times Style, The Telegraph, Cosmopolitan, Glamour, Stylist, ELLE, The i Paper, Refinery29, and many more.
Rachel's first book Rough: How Violence Has Found Its Way Into the Bedroom And What We Can Do About It, a non-fiction investigation into sexual violence was published by Penguin Random House in 2021.
