By Shaun Menchel
In a digital world tasked with becoming more inclusive by the second, it was only a matter of time before Apple began to truly diversify their emoji portfolio. While the company’s previous emoji update saw the inclusion of female doctors and scientists, it wasn’t until this past Friday, with the announcement of Emoji OS 5, that activists began to sense a true commitment to equitable representation in the emoji world. That’s right, this new update features a whopping 37 emojis depicting women from all walks of life watching The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift starring global superstar Lucas Black. This long demanded addition to the emoji keyboard will allow women from all over the world to share a little picture of tiny yellow people that vaguely represent a culture or religion watching the third installment in The Fast and Furious franchise.
Emojis in the ‘Tokyo Drift Collection’ include Native American women watching that scene in the parking garage where the blue car gets totally wrecked, and women in traditional African head scarves enjoying that part on the mountain where that one car looks likes it’s totally going to fall over the edge but then stops itself at the last minute and hits the bad guy’s car into that giant boulder. One emoji even depicts a new mother breastfeeding her baby while violently jumping up and down in excitement over Vin Diesel’s surprise cameo.
All-in-all this new update seems to take the right steps forward to ensure that one day we may see complete and equal representation in our emoji choices, ranging from emojis for 2 Fast 2 Furious, to emojis for Fast Five, to beyond. For now, however, it seems we’ll have to suffice with just one F&F emoji set. Nevertheless, the future looks bright.