There's currently no interracial couple emoji. Tinder wants to change that.
Emoji have evolved faster than any other language in history. But, one thing that's lagged behind is the ability to represent everyone.
One community that's still not represented at all by these tiny glyphs is interracial couples, and Tinder wants to do something about that.
The dating app has created a Change.org petition urging the Unicode Consortium — the organization in charge of our emoji — to create an emoji that represents interracial couples.
AdultFriendFinder — readers’ pick for casual connections
Hinge — popular choice for regular meetups
"There's an emoji for everything. Well, almost everything," declares Tinder in a video to accompany its #representlove emoji campaign. "Isn't it time emoji represented all love?"
You might well be wondering why interracial couple emojis don't already exist.
Given that Apple released its first emoji set in Japan way back in 2008, and made emoji available worldwide in 2011, it's a fair question to ask. In 2015, after calls for greater emoji diversity, the Unicode Consortium finally added five different skin tones for several emoji. As part of Apple's iOS 8.3 updated, Apple unveiled a range of emoji featuring same-sex couples, and families with same-sex parents, but all family and couple emoji are currently only available in the default skin tone.
Emojipedia's Chief Emoji Officer Jeremy Burge — who also sits on Unicode's emoji subcommittee — told Wired that there are some technical obstacles standing in the way of creating an interracial couple emoji.
In January 2017, Windows became the first platform to roll out interracial emoji when Microsoft added support for interracial couples emoji. But, Burge says that it's only possible to input these emoji via copy-and-paste, and not using the emoji keyboard, which isn't exactly ideal.
"Other platforms like iOS have 3D-rendered images that all need to be created and stored in an emoji font on a device," Burge told Wired. "A font file with 52,000 colour emoji images wouldn’t be possible using Apple’s current emoji font today due to memory limitations on mobile devices."
Technical obstacles aside, Tinder says it is "fighting for emoji equality," because "all races should have a place on your keyboard." At the time of publication, the petition had 4,146 signatures, 854 shy of its 5K target.
Tinder's petition isn't the first call for interracial emoji representation, however.
According to Emojipedia's list of the top 30 most requested emoji, an emoji for interracial couples is the fourth most requested emoji behind "bearded face," "dab," and "cross-eyed face."
As Tinder recognizes in its petition description, emoji changes don't happen overnight:
"Keep in mind; it can take up to two years for a proposed emoji to complete the review, approval and standardisation process."
Let's hope Unicode steps up sooner rather than later.
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.
