New emojis, including pregnant man for trans representation, may come to your phone soon

Newly-roposed emojis will represent more diverse pregnancies and feature a pregnant transgender man and a non-binary person in an inclusive move. In honor of World Emoji Day on July 17, reference website Emojipedia released a draft emoji list that included designs of Pregnant Man and Pregnant Person emoji among the finalists. The emoji developers shared the inclusive move was to also recognize and celebrate that pregnancy is "possible for some transgender men and non-binary people." This will be in addition to the already available Pregnant Woman emoji. The emoji developers shared "a look at what the next emoji update might bring" last Thursday, reported PEOPLE. 

Some of the other proposed emojis include a multiracial handshake, and a face that cannot bear to watch, and the melted face. Emoji developers are also adding more inclusive emojis, with masculine, feminine, and gender-neutral versions of every available emoji. "Nearly all emojis can have default a gender-neutral option, with the choice to use a woman or man where relevant,” said Jeremy Burge, the chief emoji officer of the reference site Emojipedia. The same will also feature in the range of skin tones offered. Similarly 'person with crown' will be added to the existing prince and princess for gender-neutral royalty, reported The Guardian. 

This follows on the back of similar updates made last year, which added bearded person emoji that also gave users the choice to pick a masculine and feminine bearded face, reported Them. At the time, the developers also released a gender-neutral Santa, a woman in a tuxedo, a man in a wedding dress, a non-gendered parent feeding a baby, and a trans Pride flag among other things. The Unicode Consortium, a nonprofit organization that oversees emoji standards across devices, will approve new additions in September. A fan-voted poll of the anticipated emojis showed Melting Face to be the winner with 13.7% of the vote. 'Pregnant man' was also incredibly popular and garnered 5.3% of the vote. Some of the other popular new emojis include handshakes between two hands with different skin tones, hands making a heart-shape, and additional faces, such as peeking eye, holding back tears, and saluting. Some of the new icons set to be added include coral, a playground slide, a crutch, an X-ray, and an empty battery.

Unicode Consortium had initially planned to release its 14.0 version of emojis in March but postponed the release on account of the pandemic to September. "Under the current circumstances, we've heard that our contributors have a lot on their plates at the moment and decided it was in the best interests of our volunteers and the organizations that depend on the standard to push out our release date," said Mark Davis, president of the Consortium, in a statement at the time.

"This year we simply can't commit to the same schedule we've adhered to in the past." The Unicode Consortium will announce the new additions in September, before rolling them out on different platforms in the months after that. Once the final updates and additions are confirmed device manufacturers can decide when to make the emojis available to users.