All women wear pink.
In an attempt to show how inherently sexist our everyday lives are, Always as part of their #LikeAGirl campaign have released an advert pointing out just how sexist emojis are – and we use them everyday.
I think we’d all be lying if we said that we didn’t send at least one emoji a day (guilty as charged), but what is frightening is that none of us have picked up on the fact that us girls only get the sassy girl, the dancing lady, the little princess as representations of who we are in the online world.
It’s sad that it’s taken a sanitary campaign to make us realise just how inherently sexist emojis are (can women not surf, cycle, play football, run too?). Although the video may be a bit cringey, it has some very valid points. Why have we not noticed that women aren’t depicted doing the same thing as men? I know someone is reading this and is desperate to pipe up and say “ actually Ilka there are in fact women emojis on the iphone – just take a look.” But that’s not the point. Browsing through the emoji section is like looking back in time, a time when women really were depicted as sugary, pink goodness, a time that really does not represent our ever-evolving society.
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(Photo Credit: www.twitter.com)Â
It’s just all so horrendously gendered. Â
If you can just about look past the pink nails and pink outifts, what seems even more disturbing is the playboy-esque emoji (I’m looking at you dancing girls or “sugarbabies”). Where did that come from? Is that what women are supposed to do? Just dance? Show some skin? If you scroll through there are no women doing activities or working – nothing that screams professional, (unless of course you count getting married as a career choice.) I mean I understand that women get paid 20% less than men but that doesn’t mean we’re invisible. Jobs aren’t directly catered for just one gender, in today’s society you can have female doctors, policewomen even female chefs. Why aren’t there emojis that represent that? It happens in real life so why shouldn’t it happen online too?
With the ever increasing popularity of the online world, and millions of people using iphones every day for social validation, it’s worrying that women are still being limited to stereotypes. What are we teaching young girls if all they see is brides, pink and nailvarnish, we’re not exactly sending out the message that women can do and be whatever they want. It might seem like an obvious point but during puberty, young girls are at their most impressionable. In the modern language of emojis all we are doing is reinforcing a vicious cycle of inequality.