Redheads, rejoice! After years of campaigning, gingers are officially one step closer to getting their own emojis.
Though recent emoji updates for iOS have equipped Apple users with a more gender and racially diverse set of tiny characters, those with red hair have been sadly overlooked.
Now Jeremy Burge, Emojipedia's Chief Emoji Officer (yes, that is his real job title) has revealed that redheaded emojis, along with bald, white and curly-haired emojis, are in consideration for the next Unicode emoji release, meaning that they could be coming to a phone keyboard near you in 2018.
In a series of tweets, Burge revealed potential designs for the ginger emojis, citing celebrity redheads Jessica Chastain and Ed Sheeran as 'examples.'
'This is a proposal for the representation of a red head emoji, as well as naturally occurring hair colours, features and styles. Also proposed in this document are methods of representing white hair, curly (or afro) hair and baldness,' read Burge's screenshot from the proposal document.
Back in January, it was revealed that the Unicode Technical Committee (aka, the people in charge of new emojis. We know...) would be meeting to discuss how to bring a redheaded emoji to future software updates, after a petition for ginger emojis garnered thousands of signatures.
'The lack of a redhead emoji has been the most frequent complaint from Emojipedia users in the past three months, Burge revealed in an Emojipedia blog post. To address this, the Emoji Subcommitte are working an a proposal to 'move the discussion forward on how this can be addressed.'
The potential solutions touted ranged from creating one new 'person with red hair' emoji, to building a custom hair tag to change existing favourites. In other words, the flamenco dancing lady, the detective, the sassy hair flipper and the hand-holding couple could all soon become ginger - though Unicode's proposal confirms that 'there are no plans at present [...] for red-headed sports people.'
Though 2018 feels like a long time to wait, in the interests of emoji equality, we're prepared to sit this out...
READ MORE: Apple's New Emojis Are The Most Gender Diverse Yet