There’s a New Curly Haired Emoji Thanks to Dove

Have you ever felt personally victimized by the straight-haired emoji? Well, don't fret my fellow curly-haired ladies, Dove has our back. With the launch of their new 'Love Your Curls' campaign, Dove releases an emoji keyboard equipped with 27 curly hair designs with different hair colors and skin tones. Apparently, Dove felt that straight-haired emoji reinforce dominant beauty standards that do not represent all women.

Rob Candelino, the vice president of haircare at Unilever (which owns Dove), said in a press release: "we want the discussion and debate in society so that we can arrest and stop and hopefully reverse negative and narrow depictions of beauty. We’re proud of the role that Dove has played in promoting a lot of these positive depictions. We invite everyone to play a role. It’s not about us; it’s about our women." In my opinion, it's about an awesome new curly-haired product created by Dove.

Dove's curly-haired emoji keyboard is only the beginning of this campaign. Dove celebrates curly hair with empowering videos, and children's books with poems and stories encouraging young women to embrace their curls. Now, I must admit, this is pretty cool because I remember as a young girl in high school, I would always straighten my hair because I was ashamed of my curls. A campaign promoting self-beauty and diversity is always a positive, regardless of agenda.

As a curly-haired woman, it personally hasn't offended me the lack of curly-haired emoji. But, Dove did a survey of 1,500 girls and women in the United States discovering that majority of women felt they were underrepresented for their hair type. It appears, that these emoji are actually something we were asking for compared to the taco and unicorn emoji.

I love anything that promotes diversity and representation of all skin types, genders, and in this case...hair types. But at the end of the day, cannot help but feel that Dove is just selling their new curly hair product.

But, awesome, I have a new emoji.

FYI: I just tried this new emoji keyboard, it may be a slight nuisance to copy and paste the emoji but it is cute. I texted Mike using it:

The app is available on both Apple and Android phones and is free.