You can use them to order pizza, talk about the weather, discuss your weekend dance plans or share your beauty secrets, but to date the pile of poo is the only bodily function offered in the emoji keyboard.
Given that half the world’s population is likely to menstruate at some point in their life it seems fairly ridiculous that we can’t share our time of the month experiences with those saved in our contacts.
One Argentinian sanitary towel company, Nosotras, is seeking to change that.
Enter #femojis.
“Over the world there is around 300 million women that have their period right now, and none of them is able to express it through emojis, the universal digital language.
“We want to change this situation!,” Nosotras wrote on their Change.org petition.
The petition, which is addressed to Unicode (the company responsible for setting emoji keyboard allowances) and has over 35,000 signatures, presents six femojis for possible keyboard inclusion.
These include a pad, for those nights when you don’t want a sleepover buddy but can’t be bothered articulating why.
"Soz babe, can't tonight. Spending the night with a surfboard." Source: Change.org.
A hot water bottle, for when you want to let your mum know that you wish she was near to tend to your needs.
"Dear mum, be here now. xoxo your dying daughter." Source: Change.org.
A set of blood stained pants, which is basically the emoji version of an SOS callout to your girlfriend.
"SEND HELP. And pizza. But mostly help." Source: Change.org.
A bloated Violet Beauregarde lookalike for those times when your pants won't fit and your period baby game is strong.
"If anyone needs me I'll be over here menstruating. Having a whale of a time." Source: Change.org.
There's also a hormonal breakout spotty faced girl and a half-rage half-cry faced girl, which are so very real and would be highly useful when calling in sick to work or in attempting to avoid hormonally charged arguments.
"All of the hormones, all of the feels." Source: Change.org.
Nicola Coronado, Marketing Director of Bodyform, the UK arm of Nosotras said, "Menstruation is a totally natural process – but we have all felt a bit shy about discussing it.
"We want to break down the taboos around periods. There are currently 1620 emojis on the Unicode keyboard, but for the important things in life, like our periods, there is no way to express ourselves in this new universal language.
"And let’s be honest, if an aubergine can prosper on your list of frequently used emojis, we’re certain that you can find a million-and-one uses for Bodyform femojis!"
What are you waiting for? Sign the petition for period emojis here.
Top Comments
35,000 signed a petition for more female emoticons.... Whilst in the real world there are women abducted into sex slavery, having their genitals mutilated, denied basic rights and honour killed. But that's not the west I guess.
It seems western feminists really do a have a supply and demand problem, white middle class western women scraping the bottom of the issues barrel for things like this, men who spread their legs on trains, gender issues in Lego and other nonsense like micro aggressions and triggering. It's ardent rubbish from a throughly spoilt and entitled sector of society. They don't get that western middle class white women are the third most privileged group in the world behind celebrities and royalty.
There are many real and legitimate issues for feminists and indeed everyone to address outside of the west, but western feminists won't touch them. 18% of US women now identify as feminists, in the UK it's down to 7%. It's because we look at western feminists and scorn the trivial issues they campaign on and reject the hypocrisy of their silence on the real issues they stay quiet on.
Is a period product company's petition for period related emojis a feminist campaign?
Not all middle class western women are white!