We Might Be Getting A Rainbow-Flag Emoji

Recently, emoji have become way more inclusive, and we're loving it. Last year, we got more diverse skin tones for many. And last week, we learned that 11 new professional female emoji (plus male and female alternates to existing emoji) were approved. This morning, we received more potentially exciting emoji news: A Google employee submitted a proposal to the Unicode Consortium for a rainbow-flag emoji. Mark Davis, the man who submitted the rainbow-flag proposal, is actually the cofounder and president of the Consortium. (The Unicode Consortium, if you're not familiar, is a non-profit corporation responsible for approving new emoji applications and standardizing the way emoji look on different platforms.) That being the case, it’s no surprise that he had a useful suggestion of how to make this pride-flag emoji happen in time for the next update, scheduled for June of next year. Davis proposed combining code from the current rainbow and white flag emoji with a process called Zero­Width Joiner, which he explains in the proposal. The application hasn't officially been approved, but we have high hopes considering the Consortium's track record for inclusivity. We can't wait to fly that virtual rainbow flag.