There’s a unicorn, taco and middle finger emoji but still no representation for women with textured hair. Dove changes that once and for all with the first emojis with curly hair. The Dove Love Your Curls emojis, developed in partnership with Snaps marketing platform, include 27 curly hair designs with a wide range of skin tones and hair colors, plus seven animated GIFs. Clocking in at 131 emojis in total, Dove’s new emojis are part of the Love Your Curls campaign which includes an illustration book and a full product line.
Rob Candelino, VP of Haircare at Unilever, believes the new emojis help fulfill its ongoing mission to inspire women to embrace their unique hair texture. “Dove Hair is committed to redefining traditional standards of beauty and ensuring women and girls see accurate reflections of themselves in the world around them, including, and especially, in digital and social media – which is why we’re so excited to introduce the Dove Love Your Curls Emojis,” he said. “1 in 3 women in the United States have curly or wavy hair, yet there are zero images of these women today in the increasingly common language of emojis. That felt wrong to us, so we are fixing it and hope by doing so, we will continue inspiring all women to love their curls.”
Emojis aren’t just some superficial Internet craze either. Dove enlisted Sali A. Tagliamonte, Professor of Linguistics at the University of Toronto, to examine the emotional impact of emojis on women and girls. After commissioning a survey of 1500 women and girls, they found “80% of women and girls with curly hair feel existing emojis underrepresent their hair type. When you have a symbol that embodies someone’s identity, it’s powerful,” she said. “The new Dove Love Your Curls Emojis have the ability to empower curly women to be more themselves.”
You can download the Dove Love Your Curls Emoji keyboard in the App Store or Google Play for use in text and messenger systems including iMessage, SMS/text, Facebook messenger and Whats App. And if you post #LoveYourCurls on Twitter, a custom Dove Curly Emoji will auto-generate within the tweet. (Done!)
We just downloaded the new curly hair emojis. Thanks @Dove! #LoveYourCurls https://t.co/FiJTPaaEz7 pic.twitter.com/AKktYRpoRI
— The Fashion Spot (@fashion_spot) November 4, 2015
