Person: Red Hair Emoji

A gender-neutral person with red hair. This emoji exists because 20,000 people signed a petition demanding it. Emma Kelly, founder of the redhead website Ginger Parrot, launched a Change.org campaign in 2015 after noticing that Apple's new diverse emoji included skin tone options but completely skipped hair color. The petition signatures were loaded onto a USB stick decorated as a "carrot of justice" and hand-delivered to Apple's headquarters in Cupertino.

The campaign worked. Jeremy Burge, then vice-chair of the Unicode Emoji Subcommittee and founder of Emojipedia, submitted a formal proposal in January 2017. The lack of a redhead emoji was, at the time, the single most common complaint from Emojipedia users. But implementing it was "winding, heated, and absurdly technical," as PopSci later put it. Unicode went back to the drawing board three or four times debating whether to create a standalone emoji, a hair-color tag system, or something else entirely. They finally settled on a ZWJ approach: combine a person emoji with a red hair component (🦰) using a Zero Width Joiner.

🧑‍🦰 shipped as part of Unicode 12.1 (2019) as the gender-neutral version, complementing 👩‍🦰 (woman: red hair) and 👨‍🦰 (man: red hair), which arrived a year earlier in Unicode 11.0 (2018). Together, the three variants represent roughly 1-2% of the global population: the rarest natural hair color in humans, caused by variants in the MC1R gene on chromosome 16.

On social media, 🧑‍🦰 serves as a representation emoji for redheads, but also as a personality signal. Redheads on TikTok and Instagram use it in bios and captions as an identity marker, the same way brunettes might use 🧑‍🦱. Self-care and "ginger pride" content uses it alongside hashtags like #RedheadPride and #GingerAndProud.

Beyond identity, it shows up in conversations about hair dyeing ("went copper today 🧑‍🦰"), fictional character references (any discussion about Merida, Jessica Rabbit, or Ron Weasley eventually pulls it in), and the ongoing cultural conversation about redhead discrimination.

In the UK especially, where "gingerism" has been described as a real form of prejudice by major media outlets, the emoji carries extra weight. It's used both by people celebrating their hair color and by people poking fun at stereotypes. The tone depends entirely on who's typing.

🧑‍🦰 is almost never flirty on its own. It's an identity and description emoji. The only scenario where it edges into flirtatious territory is when someone uses it to compliment your appearance: "love the 🧑‍🦰 look on you." Even then, the flirtiness comes from the compliment, not the emoji.

• •Used in their bio on a dating app? Self-identification, not flirting at you specifically.
• •Sent after "you looked great today 🧑‍🦰"? Mild flirtation through appearance-based compliment.
• •Used while describing someone else? Zero romantic content.
• •Paired with 🔥? Could be "you're hot" or could just be "fiery redhead." Context wins.

The story of 🧑‍🦰 starts with a petition and a USB stick shaped like a carrot.

In early 2015, Apple released its first wave of skin-tone-diverse emoji. Emma Kelly, editor of the redhead lifestyle site Ginger Parrot, noticed something immediately: you could now choose from five skin tones, but every single person emoji had the same default hair color. Redheads, who make up about 1-2% of the world's population, were completely absent. She launched a Change.org petition titled "Redheads should have emoji, too!" that eventually gathered over 20,000 signatures.

In July 2015, Kelly delivered the signatures to Apple's Cupertino headquarters on a USB drive decorated as a "carrot of justice." BBC Radio 5 Live covered the petition. The Guardian ran quotes. The internet cared, loudly.

Behind the scenes, the technical challenge was real. As PopSci documented in their oral history, dying an emoji's hair red sounds like a simple cosmetic tweak, but it required a code overhaul. The Unicode Technical Committee went "back to the drawing board three or four times." Options ranged from a standalone redhead emoji to a tag system that could change any emoji's hair color. Jeremy Burge, Emojipedia's founder and vice-chair of the Emoji Subcommittee, submitted the formal proposal (L2/17-011) in January 2017.

Unicode eventually settled on a ZWJ (Zero Width Joiner) approach: combine an existing person emoji with a new hair-component character (🦰 red, 🦱 curly, 🦳 white, 🦲 bald). This solved the technical problem while also adding curly, gray, and bald representation in the same update. The gendered versions (👩‍🦰 and 👨‍🦰) shipped in Unicode 11.0 (June 2018). The gender-neutral 🧑‍🦰 followed in Unicode 12.1 (2019).

But the cultural history of red hair goes back much further than emoji. Ancient Egyptians reportedly sacrificed red-haired people to the god Osiris. In medieval Europe, red-haired women were singled out during witch trials. Ancient Greeks believed redheads would turn into vampires after death. The stereotypes haven't gone away: a 2005 South Park episode ("Ginger Kids," S9E11) exported British anti-ginger prejudice to the US so effectively that Ed Sheeran later said it "fucking ruined my life." The episode inspired real-world "Kick a Ginger Day" attacks in Canadian and US schools.

So when 🧑‍🦰 finally arrived, it wasn't just an emoji. It was a correction.

The gender-neutral 🧑‍🦰 was approved in Unicode 12.1 (May 2019) as a ZWJ sequence combining 🧑 Person (U+1F9D1U+1F9D1) + ZWJ (U+200DU+200D) + 🦰 Red Hair (U+1F9B0U+1F9B0). The gendered variants (👩‍🦰 and 👨‍🦰) arrived earlier in Unicode 11.0 (June 2018). The 🦰 hair component itself was part of a set of four hair modifiers introduced in Emoji 11.0: 🦰 red, 🦱 curly, 🦳 white, and 🦲 bald. All four were proposed by Jeremy Burge in L2/17-011.

1. 2015Emma Kelly launches 'Redheads should have emoji too' petition on Change.org, delivers 20,000 signatures to Apple on a USB carrot↗
2. 2017Jeremy Burge submits redhead emoji proposal (L2/17-011) to Unicode Technical Committee↗
3. 2018Unicode 11.0 introduces 👩‍🦰 and 👨‍🦰 (gendered red hair) plus 🦰 hair component↗
4. 2018Apple previews ginger emojis on World Emoji Day, ships them in iOS 12.1 (October)↗
5. 2019Unicode 12.1 adds 🧑‍🦰 (gender-neutral person: red hair)↗

Red hair carries wildly different cultural weight depending on where you are. In Ireland and Scotland, roughly 10% of the population has it. It's normal, even celebrated. The phrase "Black Irish" describes the contrast between Ireland's redheads and its dark-haired majority, and both are points of national identity.

In the UK, "ginger" has been used as a slur. British media has acknowledged "gingerphobia" as a genuine phenomenon, with calls to make red hair a protected characteristic under hate crime legislation. The South Park "Ginger Kids" episode amplified this internationally.

In parts of the Middle East and North Africa, red hair (or henna-dyed red hair) is relatively common and carries positive associations with tradition and beauty. In ancient Egypt, the relationship was darker: redheads were associated with the god Set and were sometimes ritually sacrificed.

In Japan and South Korea, natural red hair is extremely rare and often associated with anime characters and Western foreigners. The emoji reads as "foreign" or "fictional character" rather than a representation of local identity.

In parts of Eastern Europe, red hair carries superstitious associations. In Russia, there's a folk saying that redheads bring trouble. In Greece, paradoxically, a redheaded child is considered lucky in some regions.

Red hair occurs in roughly equal percentages across genders (about 1-2% of the global population), but the cultural associations differ sharply. "Redhead" in pop culture evokes different archetypes for 👩‍🦰 (fiery, passionate, Jessica Rabbit) versus 👨‍🦰 (Ed Sheeran, the "ginger" teasing trope, Ron Weasley). The red hair emoji was one of the most-requested emoji additions, driven partly by the "gingers need representation" campaign.

• •The redhead emoji petition signatures were delivered to Apple HQ on a USB stick inside a case decorated as a "carrot of justice." It's possibly the most on-brand piece of tech activism ever.
• •Unicode's technical committee went "back to the drawing board three or four times" before settling on the ZWJ approach for hair-color emojis. What sounds like a simple color change required a fundamental new encoding strategy.
• •Only 1-2% of the world's population has natural red hair. It's the rarest hair color in humans, caused by variants in the MC1R gene on chromosome 16.
• •Ancient Egyptians reportedly sacrificed redheads to the god Osiris. In medieval Europe, red-haired women were singled out as suspected witches. Ancient Greeks believed redheads would become vampires after death.
• •Ed Sheeran said the South Park "Ginger Kids" episode (2005) "fucking ruined my life" by exporting anti-ginger bullying from the UK to the rest of the English-speaking world.

• •Using 🧑‍🦰 alongside a ginger joke can land very differently depending on whether you're a redhead. Redheads making fun of themselves? Solidarity. Non-redheads making the joke? Could easily read as bullying, especially in the UK where anti-ginger prejudice is taken seriously.
• •On older devices, 🧑‍🦰 breaks into two separate emoji (🧑🦰), which can confuse the recipient. They might wonder why you sent a person emoji followed by a red blob.

• •Emma Kelly's "carrot of justice" USB delivery to Apple HQ in 2015 is one of the most memorable moments in emoji activism. BBC Radio 5 Live, The Guardian, and Bustle covered it. Twenty thousand people signed a petition for a hair color.
• •South Park's "Ginger Kids" (S9E11, 2005) became the cultural flashpoint for anti-redhead humor. Cartman claims gingers "have no souls." The episode inspired real-world "Kick a Ginger Day" attacks in Canadian and American schools, investigated by police as hate incidents.
• •Ed Sheeran, probably the world's most famous living redhead, told Slam Radio that the South Park episode changed how Americans treated him. Before it aired, "people never knew what a ginger was in America." After, everything changed.
• •TIME magazine ran "New Redhead Emoji Is a Cause for a Ginger Celebration" when the emoji was confirmed for 2018, treating the three-year campaign as a legitimate diversity milestone.

• •This is a ZWJ sequence: U+1F9D1U+1F9D1 (Person) + U+200DU+200D (ZWJ) + U+1F9B0U+1F9B0 (Red Hair). Total: 3 codepoints, 7 UTF-16 code units.
• •Supports skin tone modifiers applied to the person component: U+1F9D1 U+1F3FB U+200D U+1F9B0U+1F9D1 U+1F3FB U+200D U+1F9B0 produces 🧑🏻‍🦰 (light skin, red hair).
• •Shortcodes: :person_red_hair::person_red_hair: (GitHub), :red_haired_person::red_haired_person: (Slack). Discord uses :person_red_hair::person_red_hair: as well.
• •Fallback rendering: on platforms that don't support this ZWJ sequence, it displays as two separate emoji (🧑🦰). Always test on target devices.
• •The 🦰 component (U+1F9B0U+1F9B0) is an Emoji_Component character. It's not meant to be used alone in most contexts, though some platforms do render it as a standalone red-hair swatch.

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