Person: Beard Emoji

A person with a full beard. Emojipedia describes it as representing "a person with a beard" and notes it's used to talk about bearded people in a gender-inclusive way. That neutrality is fairly new. For most of 🧔's life, it was just a bearded guy.

The Unicode data file has always called codepoint U+1F9D4U+1F9D4 BEARDED PERSONBEARDED PERSON, but the CLDR English short name was "Man: Beard" until Emoji 13.1 in 2021. Vendors read "man" and drew a man. When Unicode added 🧔‍♂️ (man: beard) and 🧔‍♀️ (woman: beard) in 2021, the base 🧔 was quietly redesigned as androgynous, and the CLDR name was rewritten as "Person: Beard." Some platforms still don't fully sell the neutral read.

Today 🧔 works three ways: a generic bearded person, shorthand for masculinity/ruggedness/hipster vibe, and occasionally a winking reference to the LGBTQ+ slang meaning of "beard" (a partner used to mask someone's sexual orientation). Most uses are the first two.

Shows up in beard-care content, barber TikToks, No-Shave November posts, and Movember fundraising. People with beards use it as a self-referential avatar the way people with glasses use 🤓. It's a staple of "dad" discourse, lumbersexual jokes, and hockey playoff threads.

Usage skews masculine despite the official neutrality. Dictionary.com notes it broadly stands in for men or masculinity generally. On X and Instagram, it co-occurs with 💈, ✂️, 🪒, 🔥, and 🍺 more often than with any gender-neutral companion emoji. Expect a quiet revival every late October as Movember ramps up.

In 2017, Unicode approved U+1F9D4 BEARDED PERSONU+1F9D4 BEARDED PERSON as part of Emoji 5.0 (technically Unicode 10.0). On paper it was gender-neutral. In practice, every major vendor drew a man. Apple gave him dirty-blonde hair. Google gave him a rounder, bushier aesthetic. Samsung made him look like a serious craftsman. The CLDR short name in English was "Man: Beard," so that's what keyboard pickers labeled him.

By 2020 the Unicode Emoji Subcommittee revisited the design, and in Emoji 13.1 (2021) they split the emoji into three: the neutral 🧔 (quietly redesigned as androgynous), 🧔‍♂️ (man: beard, a ZWJ sequence with ♂️), and 🧔‍♀️ (woman: beard, a ZWJ sequence with ♀️). The CLDR name for the base was rewritten as "Person: Beard."

The woman variant was the symbolic headline. It represents women with PCOS-related hirsutism, drag king performers, trans women, and anyone whose hormones don't follow the textbook. Activist Harnaam Kaur, the first bearded woman to walk London Fashion Week and a Guinness World Record holder, was the kind of public figure who made that addition feel overdue rather than radical.

1. 2017Approved as `BEARDED PERSON` in Unicode 10.0 / Emoji 5.0. CLDR English name set as "Man: Beard." Apple ships a dirty-blonde bearded man on iOS 11.1 in September.
2. 2020Unicode Emoji Subcommittee proposes gender split, announces redesign of base 🧔 as androgynous. [Emojipedia covers the overhaul](https://x.com/Emojipedia/status/1307115291030310912).
3. 2021Emoji 13.1 ships in February: 🧔‍♂️ (man) and 🧔‍♀️ (woman) launch. Base emoji renamed to "Person: Beard." Apple, Google, and Twitter ship the variants within months.
4. 2022Most vendors catch up. Some minor platforms still render 🧔 as unambiguously male.
5. 2024Design stabilizes. Apple has iterated the beard to be slightly shorter and darker over time, reflecting shifting "peak beard" aesthetics.

• •The gender-neutral redesign of 🧔 in 2021 was explicitly framed by Unicode as part of a broader 13.1 push toward inclusive representation. The 🧔‍♀️ variant drew the most attention, but the quiet redesign of the base 🧔 was arguably the bigger shift.
• •A 2013 study found heavy stubble ranks as most attractive, while full beards score highest for perceived parenting ability. Stubble wins short-term attraction, full beards win long-term judgments.
• •Peter the Great of Russia imposed a beard tax in 1698 to westernize his court. Beard-wearers had to carry a metal "beard token" to prove they'd paid. The stubbornness of Russian Orthodox beards outlasted the policy.
• •Harnaam Kaur became the youngest woman in the world with a full beard per Guinness World Records in 2016, at age 24. Her PCOS advocacy cleared the path for the 🧔‍♀️ emoji five years later.
• •Movember was started in 2003 by two Australians who just wanted to grow mustaches. A year later they attached it to prostate cancer fundraising, and it's since funded 1,250+ men's health projects globally.
• •The Apple rendering of 🧔 has always featured dirty-blonde hair, while Google, Microsoft, and Samsung opted for darker brown beards. This is one of the emojis where platform design choice is most visually obvious.
• •In Sikhism, keeping uncut hair (kesh) is one of the Five Ks of the faith. Guru Gobind Singh reportedly said "for my Sikh the use of razor shall be as sinful as incest." For millions of Sikh men, 🧔 isn't fashion, it's identity.
• •The 2025 World Beard and Moustache Championships in Pennsylvania drew 424 competitors across categories including "Musketeer," "Dali Moustache," "Freestyle Full Beard," and "Creative Fantasy."

• •🧔 is a staple emoji for Movember and No-Shave November social posts every year. Movember has raised $837M+ since 2003 across 1,200+ men's health projects.
• •NHL Twitter lights up with 🧔 every spring. The playoff beard tradition started with the 1980s New York Islanders, inspired by Swedish players Anders Kallur and Stefan Persson, who mimicked tennis champ Björn Borg's Grand Slam beard.
• •In 2016, Harnaam Kaur became the first bearded woman to walk London Fashion Week and a rallying figure for PCOS visibility. Her advocacy shaped the argument for adding 🧔‍♀️ five years later.
• •The term "beard" for a heterosexual cover partner entered American vernacular around 1955-1958, with Rock Hudson's marriage to Phyllis Gates as a famous historical example).