2020’s New Inclusive Emoji Will Finally Include Bottle-Fed Babies

The Unicode Consortium has released the new emoji that will roll out later this fall, as part of the Emoji 13.0 update—and they’re more inclusive than ever. The list of 117 new emoji includes 55 new gender and skin-tone variants and an emoji for bottle-feeding parents, among others.

Until now, emoji only represented a woman breastfeeding her child. Now, with the new update, there will be emoji for a man, a woman, or a gender-inclusive person feeding baby with a bottle.

Some of the other new emoji include Mx. Claus, a gender-inclusive alternative to Santa Claus and Mrs. Claus, a woman or gender-inclusive person in a tux, and a man or gender-inclusive person in a veil.

“Building on our ongoing effort to prioritize emoji that are more inclusive, we proposed support for all gender variants for ‘person in veil’ and ‘person in tuxedo,’ and introduced ‘person feeding baby with a bottle.’ Until this year, the only emoji that depicts childcare is the ‘breastfeeding’ emoji. Since a lack of breasts doesn’t preclude you from nurturing your child, we want to introduce an emoji that everyone can use,” Jennifer Daniel, Google’s design director for the Android Emoji Program, stated in a news release.

The release will also include emoji that express more empathy, including “two people hugging” and a “slightly smiling face with a tear,” as well as the Transgender flag (the proposal for which was sponsored by Google and Microsoft).

You can expect to see the new emoji on smartphones—including Android 11—in the second half of 2020. While these emoji are long overdue, we’re glad it’s finally here!

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