Drop Of Blood Emoji

A single drop of dark red blood. This emoji has one of the best origin stories in the entire Unicode standard: it exists because period activists fought for it.

Plan International UK launched the #periodemoji campaign in 2017 to help destigmatize menstruation. Over 54,600 people voted on five proposed designs, and the winning design was a pair of stained period underwear. Unicode rejected it. Plan UK regrouped, partnered with the UK's NHS Blood and Transplant service, and submitted a blood drop design instead. In February 2019, Unicode approved it as part of Emoji 12.0.

Dictionary.com notes it can represent "all things blood-related, including bleeding from injury, blood tests and donations, and menstruation." The generality was strategic: by making it about blood broadly, not periods specifically, it got through Unicode's approval process. But everyone involved knew what it was really for.

Menstrual health researcher Marni Sommer called the approval "fantastic" for normalizing period conversations. Researcher Chris Bobel noted the emoji's intentional ambiguity: it represents blood generally, serving multiple purposes. That flexibility is why it works.

🩸 serves three audiences that rarely overlap.

For menstrual health advocates, it's the period emoji. "On my period 🩸" is the shorthand that Plan International fought for. In developing countries where 1 in 10 girls miss school during menstruation, having an emoji that normalizes the conversation carries real weight.

For medical and blood donation contexts, it's straightforward health communication. "Donated blood today 🩸" or "blood test results 🩸" uses it literally.

For everything else, it's injury, horror aesthetics, true crime content, and dramatic flair. "This paper cut 🩸" or in vampire/Halloween content. Google Trends data shows 🩸 has exploded in search interest, rising from 14 to 78 since 2020, overtaking even 💉 Syringe by 2024. Its growth is one of the steepest of any emoji released in 2019.

In 2017, Plan International UK launched the #periodemoji campaign. The goal was to get a period-specific emoji into Unicode to help destigmatize menstruation. They created five candidate designs and put them to a public vote. Over 54,600 people participated, and the winning design was a pair of underwear with a blood droplet.

Unicode rejected it. President Mark Davis stated that "proposals are accepted based on proposal strength alone and are not impacted by petitions and lobbying."

Plan UK pivoted. In September 2018, they partnered with NHS Blood and Transplant, the UK government's blood donation service, and submitted the runner-up design: a simple blood drop. The partnership was strategic. By framing the emoji as representing blood broadly (donations, medical contexts, menstruation), it became harder to reject on the grounds of being too narrow.

Unicode approved it in February 2019. TIME Magazine reported the approval as a win for period activism. Global Citizen called it a step toward ending menstrual stigma. Women's health organizations immediately rebranded it as "the period emoji" in the hours after approval.

The broader context matters. Globally, menstrual stigma keeps 1 in 10 African girls home from school during their period. In Uganda, 28% of girls miss school while menstruating. In Malawi, it's up to three days per month. An emoji alone doesn't fix this, but it joins a larger effort to make periods something people can discuss openly.

Approved in Unicode 12.0 (2019) as U+1FA78U+1FA78 DROP OF BLOOD. Added to Emoji 12.0 in 2019. Proposed jointly by Melissa Thermidor (NHS Blood and Transplant) and Francis Mason (Plan International UK). Part of the same batch that added 🦻 Ear with Hearing Aid, 🦯 White Cane, and 🦽 Manual Wheelchair.

Menstrual stigma varies dramatically by culture, which gives 🩸 different weight in different contexts. In Western social media, it's a casual health reference. In parts of South Asia, the Middle East, and Sub-Saharan Africa, where menstruation is heavily taboo, having a digital symbol that says "this is normal" carries advocacy significance that Western users may not appreciate.

In Japan, blood type emojis (🅰️🅱️🅾️🆎) are popular because of ketsueki-gata, the belief that blood type determines personality. 🩸 sometimes appears alongside these in Japanese social media in blood type personality discussions, giving it a cultural layer that doesn't exist in the West.

• •The actual Unicode proposal for 🩸 was co-submitted by Melissa Thermidor from NHS Blood and Transplant and Francis Mason from Plan International UK. The NHS partnership was strategic: it broadened the emoji's use case beyond menstruation to include blood donation and medical contexts.
• •NPR reported that women's health organizations "immediately rebranded it as 'the period emoji'" within hours of Unicode's approval, despite its official name being the neutral "Drop of Blood."
• •In Uganda, 28% of girls miss school while menstruating. In Malawi, girls miss up to three days per month. 🩸 is part of a broader effort to normalize menstrual health conversations globally.

• •Plan International UK's #periodemoji campaign was covered by NPR, TIME Magazine, CBC Radio, and Global Citizen, making 🩸 one of the most journalistically covered emoji approvals in Unicode history.
• •In Japan, blood type personality theory (ketsueki-gata) makes 🩸 culturally relevant beyond Western medical/menstrual contexts. Over half of Japanese respondents in surveys say they enjoy discussing personalities based on blood type associations, connecting 🩸 to personality and compatibility discussions.

• •🩸 is U+1FA78U+1FA78. Unicode name: DROP OF BLOOD. CLDR: "drop of blood." Common shortcodes: :drop_of_blood::drop_of_blood: (Slack, Discord, GitHub).
• •No skin tone variants (it's an object emoji). Single codepoint, no ZWJ sequences. Released in Emoji 12.0 (2019).

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