People With Bunny Ears Emoji

Two people dancing side by side in leotards and bunny ears. That's the literal reading. The figurative reading, which is what almost everyone actually means, is closer to "you and me, out on the town, chaos approved." 👯 is the gender-neutral base of the bunny-ears family, the codepoint that existed before 👯‍♀️ and 👯‍♂️ were ever carved out of it. On most platforms it still renders as two feminine-coded silhouettes, which is a quiet reminder that the original 2010 Unicode name was "Woman With Bunny Ears" (singular, despite showing two people).

The backstory is weirder than the usage. SoftBank shipped a bunny girl to Japanese phone keyboards around 2000, borrowing the Playboy Bunny costume that had already been absorbed into anime, manga, and hostess-bar aesthetics. By the time Unicode 6.0 standardized it in 2010, the costume had drifted so far from Chicago 1960 that Americans looked at early Apple designs and saw ballerinas with headbands instead. Apple's iOS 8.3 update in 2015 enlarged the ears by roughly 200%, and the internet collectively realized what it had been sending for years.

None of that baggage shows up in modern texting. 👯 means "we're going out," "this is my person," or "twinning with my bestie" depending on the caption, and that's about it.

👯 is a friendship emoji first, a party emoji second, and a flirt emoji almost never. That order matters. It earns its keep on Instagram as the caption that goes under two-person photos where both people made an effort, on TikTok as the shorthand for the "twin" compliment Gen Z has mainstreamed ("okay twin 👯"), and in group chats as the RSVP to any plan that involves leaving the house.

The gender-neutral base 👯 is the default when people type it from the keyboard without picking a variant. The gendered 👯‍♀️ is far more common in actual published captions because it's what Apple surfaces in the women-with-bunny-ears picker, but the raw 👯 still holds a steady share of searches and copies. The base emoji tends to carry less explicit "girls' night" framing and more generic "duo energy," which is why it shows up around bachelorette parties, but also around karaoke nights, costume parties, and brother/sister content where the gendered versions would feel off.

Where it doesn't belong: work Slack, LinkedIn, corporate anything. The Playboy DNA is still there in the design, even when nobody reads it that way, and the emoji carries party-coded energy that most professional channels can't metabolize.

The story starts at the Playboy Club in Chicago, which opened on February 29, 1960, a leap day. The original Bunny costume was designed by Ilse Taurins, a Latvian émigré, whose seamstress mother stitched a prototype from a one-piece swimsuit layered over a merry-widow corset, with yarn ears and a fluffy cotton tail. Hugh Hefner, Victor Lownes, Arnold Morton, and Playboy illustrator LeRoy Neiman reviewed it and approved. The costume became the first commercial uniform registered with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (registration number 0762884).

Three years later Gloria Steinem spent about a month undercover as a Bunny at the Manhattan Playboy Club and published "A Bunny's Tale" in SHOW magazine (May 1963). She described the corset as something that "would have made Scarlett O'Hara blanch" and documented the mandatory medical exams. The article became one of the founding texts of second-wave feminist investigative journalism.

The costume crossed the Pacific and changed shape. Japanese pop culture folded the bunny girl (バニーガール) into the kemonomimi aesthetic, where humans wear animal ears as a recognized costume trope. The Japanese version leaned cute and playful rather than cocktail-waitress provocative. SoftBank included a bunny girl in the Japanese mobile emoji set around 2000, nearly a decade before Unicode caught up.

Unicode 6.0 standardized the character in 2010 at U+1F46FU+1F46F, originally named "Woman With Bunny Ears" (singular, despite depicting two people). The ZWJ variants for women (👯‍♀️) and men (👯‍♂️) were added in Emoji 4.0 in 2016. The name was quietly updated to "People with Bunny Ears" to match. By then the Playboy connection had faded from most users' awareness, and the emoji had completed a full metamorphosis from exploitation symbol to universal shorthand for "I'm going out with my best friend."

1. 1960Playboy Club opens in Chicago on February 29. Ilse Taurins's bunny costume debuts as staff uniform.↗
2. 1963Gloria Steinem publishes "A Bunny's Tale" in SHOW magazine after working undercover at the Manhattan club.↗
3. 2000SoftBank ships a bunny-girl emoji on Japanese mobile keyboards, drawing on the kemonomimi / Playboy lineage.↗
4. 2010Unicode 6.0 standardizes the character as "Woman With Bunny Ears" at U+1F46F. Ears on Apple's design are microscopic.
5. 2015Apple's iOS 8.3 increases the ear size by roughly 200%, ending the "ballerina era." Some users accuse the update of sexualizing a friendship emoji.↗
6. 2016Emoji 4.0 splits the family into 👯 (neutral), 👯‍♀️ (women), and 👯‍♂️ (men) via ZWJ sequences. Unicode name becomes "People with Bunny Ears."
7. 2017iOS 10 redesign: longer legs, more upright pose, unambiguous dance energy. Samsung and Google follow.
8. 2018Anime "Rascal Does Not Dream of Bunny Girl Senpai" drops the bunny-girl trope back into global pop culture.↗
9. 2026WhatsApp 2.26.8.72 restyles the bunny-ears family in plain black leotards with hands behind backs. Samsung One UI 8.5 tweaks it for skin-tone combinations.↗

In the United States, 👯 is a friendship emoji with near-zero Playboy association in everyday usage. The ears read as festive accessories. The fact that Americans spent years thinking they were ballerinas with headbands shows how thoroughly the original meaning was sanded off.

In Japan, the bunny-girl (バニーガール) reference is still legible. The costume is a known trope in anime, cosplay, and hostess-bar culture, and it connects to the broader kemonomimi aesthetic that runs through modern anime and VTuber culture. In 2024, four of the ten most-subscribed VTubers were characters with animal ears. Japanese users are more likely to read 👯 with that context intact.

In South Korea, 👯 is a K-pop staple. Duo and group photos of idols use it heavily, and stan accounts treat it as the default "bias and bias's best friend" emoji.

In the UK and Australia, "hen night" and "hens" content uses 👯 the same way American bachelorette content does. The emoji crosses cleanly between the two vocabularies.

In conservative-leaning corners of the Middle East and South Asia, the Playboy heritage is more salient and the emoji gets used more cautiously, especially in captions that will reach mixed audiences.

👯 is the gender-neutral base. 👯‍♀️ (women) is the one most pickers surface by default and what most "girls' night" captions use. 👯‍♂️ (men) is the sleeper comedy option. Men with bunny ears don't carry the Playboy reference cleanly, which makes 👯‍♂️ read as absurd and slightly meme-coded, especially in ironic Gen Z usage. The three variants were formalized as ZWJ sequences in Emoji 4.0 (2016).

• •The emoji's original 2010 Unicode name was "Woman With Bunny Ears" (singular) even though it has always depicted two people. The name was quietly fixed to "People with Bunny Ears" in Emoji 4.0.
• •SoftBank shipped a bunny-girl emoji on Japanese phone keyboards around 2000, a full decade before Unicode standardized it. Japanese users had been partying in bunny ears by text message since before the iPhone existed.
• •The Playboy Bunny uniform (1960) was the first commercial uniform ever registered with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, registration number 0762884.
• •Gloria Steinem's 1963 undercover exposé "A Bunny's Tale" described the costume corset as something that "would have made Scarlett O'Hara blanch."
• •In 2017 an Israeli court ruled that a text containing 🙂💃👯✌️☄️🐿️🍾 proved intent to rent an apartment. The landlord was awarded roughly $2,200 after the prospective tenants ghosted.
• •Early Apple designs had such small bunny ears that Americans assumed they were ballerinas with headbands until iOS 8.3 (2015) enlarged them by about 200%.
• •In 2024, four of the ten most-subscribed VTubers were characters with animal ears, keeping the kemonomimi lineage that 👯 descends from very much alive.
• •WhatsApp 2.26.8.72 restyled the bunny-ears family in plain black leotards with hands held behind their backs, quietly making the costume read less like a showgirl uniform.

• •The original Playboy Bunny costume (1960) is the emoji's direct ancestor. It's the first commercial uniform ever registered by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, and its DNA runs through every 👯 sent today.
• •Gloria Steinem's "A Bunny's Tale" (1963) permanently altered how the costume was read in the West. The exposé helped launch her as a feminist icon.
• •Rascal Does Not Dream of Bunny Girl Senpai (2018) is the modern anime reference point for bunny-girl iconography. Over 2.5 million copies sold.
• •The "ballerina confusion" Quartz piece (2015) is the canonical write-up of the moment Apple enlarged the ears and the internet realized what it had been sending.
• •The Israeli emoji-apartment ruling (Dahan v. Shaul, 2017) was one of the earliest published court decisions to treat 👯 and 💃 as evidence of contractual intent.

• •👯 is a single base codepoint: U+1F46FU+1F46F (PEOPLE WITH BUNNY EARS). No ZWJ sequence needed.
• •The gendered variants are ZWJ: 👯‍♀️ = U+1F46F U+200D U+2640 U+FE0FU+1F46F U+200D U+2640 U+FE0F, 👯‍♂️ = U+1F46F U+200D U+2642 U+FE0FU+1F46F U+200D U+2642 U+FE0F.
• •Shortcodes vary: :dancers::dancers:, :people_with_bunny_ears::people_with_bunny_ears:, or :people_with_bunny_ears_partying::people_with_bunny_ears_partying: depending on the platform.
• •Most platforms do NOT support skin-tone modifiers on 👯. Samsung One UI 8.5 introduced tone-combination support; coverage elsewhere is patchy.

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