Person: Curly Hair Emoji

A person with curly hair, shown in a gender-neutral presentation. This emoji is part of the hair component system introduced in Unicode 11.0 (2018), where a base person emoji is combined with a hair style modifier through a Zero Width Joiner. The result: people can finally represent curly, coily, and wavy hair in their messages.

The push for hair diversity in emoji started with a proposal from Jeremy Burge, founder of Emojipedia, who argued in 2017 that the emoji keyboard lacked options for common hairstyles. His proposal covered four hair types: red, white/gray, curly, and bald. The argument was straightforward: if emoji offered five skin tone options, why did every person emoji have the same straight black hair?

But the curly hair emoji has also been a source of frustration. The 🦱 component depicts curly hair that hangs downward, which many people with afro-textured hair pointed out doesn't represent their hair at all. Afro-textured hair spirals upward and outward. In 2019, writer Rhianna Jones submitted a proposal for an actual afro hair emoji backed by over 65,000 signatures, but Unicode declined, arguing the existing curly hair emoji was "sufficiently representative." As of 2025, Dove and RISE.365 are campaigning to add four new hair emojis (afro, locs, braids, cornrows) through their #CodeMyCrown initiative. Their research found that 8 in 10 Black Americans struggle to find emojis that accurately reflect their hair.

The curly hair emoji family (🧑‍🦱, 👩‍🦱, 👨‍🦱) shows up heavily in the natural hair community on TikTok and Instagram. The #CurlyHair hashtag has billions of views on TikTok, and the emoji appears in bios, captions, and comments alongside content about the Curly Girl Method, wash day routines, and product reviews.

Beyond hair care content, people use it for self-representation in profiles and bios. It's one of the few ways to signal "this is what I look like" in an emoji keyboard that still defaults to straight hair for most person emojis.

In casual texting, it works as a reference to curly-haired people ("saw someone with gorgeous curls today 🧑‍🦱") or as part of describing a group ("all of us have different hair: 🧑‍🦱🧑‍🦳🧑‍🦲"). The gender-neutral 🧑‍🦱 is increasingly preferred over the gendered variants by people who want to keep things inclusive.

Not flirty in any standard interpretation. 🧑‍🦱 is descriptive and identity-based, not emotionally charged. If someone compliments your curls using this emoji, the compliment is the flirty part, not the emoji.

• •Used as self-description in a bio? Informational, not flirty.
• •Paired with a compliment about your appearance? The words are doing the flirting.
• •In a hair care discussion? Community, not romance.

The curly hair emoji exists because a petition about redhead emojis opened a door for all hair types.

In 2015, over 21,000 people signed a petition calling for a redhead emoji. Two years later, Jeremy Burge, founder of Emojipedia, submitted a formal proposal to the Unicode Consortium that went further: why stop at red hair? The proposal requested emoji components for four underrepresented hair types: red, white/gray, curly, and bald. Burge illustrated his case with celebrity "representatives" of each style, from Jessica Chastain (red) to Kit Harington (curly).

Unicode approved all four as "emoji components" in Unicode 11.0 (June 2018). The component approach was technically clever: instead of creating dozens of new base emojis, they created modifiers (🦰 Red Hair, 🦱 Curly Hair, 🦳 White Hair, 🦲 Bald) that could be combined with existing person emojis through ZWJ sequences. This meant any person + any skin tone + any hair type could theoretically be represented.

But the implementation wasn't without controversy. When the curly hair component 🦱 was revealed, reactions were mixed. The design showed hair curling downward, which represents wavy or loosely curled hair but not afro-textured hair, which grows upward and outward. People with afro hair pointed out that "curly" was being used to represent a specific subset of curly hair that didn't include their texture.

The debate intensified when Rhianna Jones submitted a formal proposal for an afro hair emoji in 2019, backed by over 65,000 signatures. Unicode declined, stating the curly hair emoji was sufficient. The decision frustrated natural hair advocates who argued that afro-textured hair is fundamentally different from curly hair, not just a variation of it.

As of 2025, Dove's #CodeMyCrown campaign with RISE.365 is pushing for four new hair emojis: afro, locs, braids, and cornrows. Their research found that out of 3,790 existing emojis, not a single one represents Black or mixed-race hairstyles specifically. The fight for hair representation in emoji isn't over.

The gender-neutral 🧑‍🦱 (Person: Curly Hair) was added in Emoji 12.1 (October 2019). It's a ZWJ sequence: U+1F9D1U+1F9D1 (Person) + U+200DU+200D (ZWJ) + U+1F9B1U+1F9B1 (Curly Hair component). The curly hair component 🦱 itself was approved in Unicode 11.0 (June 2018), initially available only with gendered bases (👩‍🦱 Woman: Curly Hair and 👨‍🦱 Man: Curly Hair). The component came from a proposal by Jeremy Burge (Emojipedia founder) that also introduced red hair, white hair, and bald emoji components.

1. 2015Over 21,000 people sign petition for redhead emoji
2. 2017Jeremy Burge (Emojipedia) proposes hair components for curly, red, white, and bald↗
3. 2018Unicode 11.0 approves 🦱 Curly Hair component alongside red, white, and bald↗
4. 2018Gendered variants 👩‍🦱 and 👨‍🦱 ship in Emoji 11.0
5. 2019Gender-neutral 🧑‍🦱 added in Emoji 12.1; Afro hair proposal declined by Unicode
6. 2025Dove and RISE.365 launch #CodeMyCrown campaign for afro, locs, braids, cornrows emojis

The curly hair emoji carries different weight across cultures because of how different societies view curly and textured hair.

In the US and UK, 🧑‍🦱 is caught up in the natural hair movement and conversations about hair discrimination. The CROWN Act (Creating a Respectful and Open World for Natural Hair), which prohibits hair-based discrimination, has been passed in over 20 US states. The emoji is sometimes referenced in these discussions as evidence that even digital representation falls short.

In Latin America, curly hair ("cabello rizado") is central to identity for Afro-Latino communities. The emoji is used in posts celebrating natural texture alongside hashtags like #CacheadaComOrgulho (Portuguese: curly with pride).

In many African countries, the emoji's wavy/curly design doesn't represent the predominant hair textures. Afro-textured, coiled hair is the norm, and the emoji's hanging curls read as "foreign" rather than representative. This is one reason the Dove #CodeMyCrown campaign has gained traction internationally.

In East Asian contexts, curly hair carries associations with permed styles rather than natural texture. The emoji is used more literally to describe someone who has curled or permed their hair.

Curly hair representation matters differently by gender. The natural hair movement, which encourages embracing curly and textured hair instead of straightening it, is primarily a women's movement (especially among Black women). The 👩‍🦱 woman: curly hair variant connects directly to this cultural moment. The 👨‍🦱 man: curly hair variant is more neutral, used for general self-description.

• •8 in 10 Black Americans report they can't find emojis that accurately represent their hair, according to Dove's 2025 research.
• •The curly hair component (🦱) generates 36 unique emoji when combined with 3 genders (person, woman, man) x 6 skin tone options (default + 5 Fitzpatrick modifiers) x 2 variants (with/without skin tone). That's a lot of curly-haired people.
• •Jeremy Burge used celebrities as visual examples in his 2017 hair emoji proposal: Kit Harington for curly hair, Anderson Cooper for white hair, Jessica Chastain for red hair, and Samuel L. Jackson for bald.
• •The CROWN Act, which prohibits hair discrimination in schools and workplaces, has been passed in over 20 US states. The emoji representation gap for natural hairstyles is sometimes cited in CROWN Act advocacy as an example of how textured hair is erased even in digital spaces.

• •The biggest misinterpretation is assuming 🧑‍🦱 represents all curly hair types equally. The 🦱 component depicts loosely curled hair that hangs downward, which doesn't represent tightly coiled or afro-textured hair. This isn't a usage error by individuals but a design limitation that Unicode has so far declined to address.
• •Some people think 🧑‍🦱 represents a specific person (like a specific celebrity). It's a generic representation of a person with curly hair, not anyone in particular.

• •Dove's #CodeMyCrown campaign, backed by Mel B, specifically calls out the emoji keyboard's failure to represent Black hairstyles and proposed four new hair emojis to Unicode in March 2025.
• •The natural hair movement, which gained mainstream visibility through hashtags like #TeamNatural and #NaturalHairDontCare on Instagram and TikTok, frequently uses the curly hair emoji family as community identifiers in bios and captions.

• •ZWJ sequence: U+1F9D1U+1F9D1 (Person) + U+200DU+200D (ZWJ) + U+1F9B1U+1F9B1 (Curly Hair). With skin tone: U+1F9D1U+1F9D1 + skin tone modifier + U+200DU+200D + U+1F9B1U+1F9B1.
• •Shortcodes: :person_curly_hair::person_curly_hair: (GitHub, Slack). CLDR short name: person: curly hairperson: curly hair.
• •The hair component U+1F9B1U+1F9B1 (🦱) is classified as an "Emoji Component" in Unicode. It's not intended for standalone use, though it renders as a standalone curly hair icon on most platforms.
• •String length: '🧑‍🦱'.length'🧑‍🦱'.length returns 5 in JavaScript. The surrogate pairs for the person and curly hair codepoints, plus the ZWJ, add up. Use a grapheme splitter for display character counting.
• •Skin tone + hair combos produce some of the longest emoji sequences: '🧑🏿‍🦱'.length'🧑🏿‍🦱'.length returns 7 in JavaScript, despite being a single visual character.

See the full Emoji Developer Tools guide for regex patterns, encoding helpers, and more.