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Young campaigners want more diverse hairstyle emojis
Image source, Rise.365
A campaign group is calling for more diverse emojis to be introduced.
It says pictures that represent black and mixed race hairstyles are something missing from the almost 4,000 emojis available.
To address this, a community support group called Rise.365 from London has designed four new ones.
The group now plans to submit the icons to the organisation which approves or rejects new designs, called the Unicode Consortium.
One of the teenage campaigners, Jayzik, said: "To create an emoji makes me feel empowered, makes me feel powerful, as they鈥檙e like everyday symbols that we use."
Why are these emojis important for representation?
Joyclen Brodie-Mends Buffong, founder of Rise.365, said the group wants to help change perceptions for young people and future generations and to help end hair-based discrimination.
About three quarters of the group's members felt there was not an emoji that represented their hairstyle, and almost a third said this made them feel overlooked and forgotten.
Jayzik, who is part of Rise.365, said: 鈥淚 feel like there's a negative stereotype around coarser hair textures like Afro hair and I feel that needs to be removed.
"It should be in an emoji because it will help us to feel seen.鈥
Chavez, who is another young person from the group, explains that Afro hair emojis are about combating negative stereotypes.
The group wants to raise awarenes of the issue and build support for their plans before the emojis will be submitted to Unicode in April.