New Hijab emoji unveiled
A new hijab emoji has been unveiled, thanks to a 16 year old Saudi girl who wanted an emoji that looked like her. The 16 year-old girl, Rayouf Alhumedhi who lives in Vienna proposed the idea last year to The ‘Unicode Consortium’, a nonprofit corporation that reviews and develops new emojis. Apple accepted the emoji […]
A new hijab emoji has been unveiled, thanks to a 16 year old Saudi girl who wanted an emoji that looked like her.
The 16 year-old girl, Rayouf Alhumedhi who lives in Vienna proposed the idea last year to The ‘Unicode Consortium’, a nonprofit corporation that reviews and develops new emojis.
Apple accepted the emoji and it was unveiled on world emoji day as one of a collection of new emoji characters.
"I’m really happy with what it looks like, I’m just so excited because it finally came out after all the work, all the writing" Alhumedhi told CNN on Tuesday.
She explained that she first had the idea in her bedroom in Berlin, where she lived with her family for five years after moving from Saudi Arabia. "My friends and i were creating a group chat on Whatsapp and i obviously had no emoji to represent me,the fact that there wasn’t an emoji to represent me and millions of other hijabi women across the world was baffling to me" Alhumedhi told CNN.
"I really had no initial idea in my mind of what it was supposed to look like, i just wanted it to be available in different skin tones- millions of women from different races do wear it"
The emoji will be available on apple devices later this year.