Reminder Ribbon Emoji

An awareness ribbon, the kind pinned to a lapel to show support for a cause. On all major platforms since 2021, 🎗️ renders as a yellow ribbon, though earlier versions varied (Facebook once showed pink, Windows once showed orange). The emoji's official Unicode name is "Reminder Ribbon," which is oddly generic for something that carries so much cultural weight.

Awareness ribbons are everywhere. Pink for breast cancer. Red for AIDS. Yellow for troops, hostages, and suicide prevention. Wikipedia lists hundreds of causes mapped to ribbon colors, with some colors representing over 50 different causes. A single purple ribbon could mean domestic violence, Alzheimer's, lupus, epilepsy, pancreatic cancer, or animal abuse, depending on who's wearing it.

The problem for the emoji is that it only comes in one color. There's no skin-tone-style selector to change the ribbon from yellow to pink. People have been requesting colored ribbon variants on Apple's forums for years, especially during Breast Cancer Awareness Month in October when the entire internet turns pink and the only ribbon emoji stays stubbornly yellow.

🎗️ spikes on specific dates. During Breast Cancer Awareness Month (October), it shows up alongside 🩷 and 💗 even though it's the wrong color. On Veterans Day and Memorial Day, it pairs with 🎖️ and 🇺🇸 for military tributes. During the 2023-2025 Israel-Hamas hostage crisis, the yellow ribbon became the primary symbol of the Bring Them Home movement, and 🎗️ appeared in social media bios, profile pictures, and posts worldwide.

At the 2024 Golden Globes, several attendees wore yellow ribbon pins for Israeli hostages. At the 2024 Grammys, singer Montana Tucker wore one on the red carpet. The emoji equivalent followed suit across social media.

Outside of specific campaigns, 🎗️ is used more loosely as a "support" or "awareness" signal. It shows up in bio descriptions for charitable organizations, in posts about fundraisers, and occasionally as a way to say "I care about this" without specifying what "this" is.

The awareness ribbon has three origin stories, and they're all connected.

The first is the 1973 hit song "Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Ole Oak Tree" by Tony Orlando and Dawn, about a man coming home from prison hoping his wife still wants him. The song became a cultural touchstone.

The second is the 1979 Iran hostage crisis. When 52 Americans were taken hostage at the US Embassy in Tehran, Penne Laingen, wife of the Chargé d'Affaires, told a reporter: "Just tell them to tie a yellow ribbon around the old oak tree." Yellow ribbons spread across the country as a symbol of hoping for their return. This was the first time a ribbon was used publicly as a way to silently voice support for a cause.

The third, and most visually important, is the red ribbon for AIDS awareness. In 1991, the Visual AIDS Artists' Caucus in New York designed a red ribbon as a symbol of solidarity with people living with HIV/AIDS. They chose red for "its connection to blood and the idea of passion, not only anger, but love, like a valentine." They launched it at the 45th Annual Tony Awards on June 2, 1991. Host Jeremy Irons was the first person onstage wearing it, and presenters were specifically asked not to explain what it meant, generating a wave of media curiosity. It became an overnight phenomenon and the template for every awareness ribbon that followed.

Then came the pink ribbon for breast cancer, which has its own complicated story. In 1991, Charlotte Haley, a 68-year-old grandmother whose sister and daughter had both been diagnosed with breast cancer, began making peach ribbons in her dining room. She attached cards reading: "The National Cancer Institute's annual budget is $1.8 billion, only 5 percent goes for cancer prevention. Help us wake up legislators and America by wearing this ribbon." Self magazine editor Alexandra Penney and Estée Lauder's Evelyn Lauder wanted to brand the ribbon. Haley refused, saying: "You're going to commercialize it. That's making money off of somebody else's pain and suffering." So they simply changed the color from peach to pink, got around the need for her permission, and launched the pink ribbon campaign in October 1992. Estée Lauder handed out 1.5 million pink ribbons at makeup counters across the country.

In Israel, the yellow ribbon has carried specific hostage-related meaning since long before 2023. After the October 7 Hamas attack, the Hostages and Missing Families Forum adopted it as the campaign symbol. Yellow ribbons were tied to trees, lampposts, fences, and car mirrors across Israel. The campaign went global, with pins appearing at the Golden Globes and Grammys.

In the US and UK, the yellow ribbon primarily signals support for deployed troops. In South Korea, yellow ribbons became the symbol of mourning after the 2014 Sewol ferry disaster, which killed 304 people (mostly high school students).

The color ambiguity of awareness ribbons can cause real problems. Green ribbons mean mental health awareness in the US but environmental activism in some European countries. Purple can mean dozens of different things. Without context, wearing a ribbon or posting 🎗️ can leave people guessing which cause you're supporting.

• •The first awareness ribbon was red, created in 1991 for AIDS awareness. The color was chosen for "its connection to blood and the idea of passion, not only anger, but love."
• •Charlotte Haley made peach breast cancer ribbons in her dining room in 1991. When Estée Lauder wanted to use them, she refused. They changed the color to pink and did it without her permission.
• •A single purple ribbon can represent over 50 different causes, from Alzheimer's to animal abuse. Green has 30+ meanings. Ribbon colors have been so thoroughly claimed that new causes struggle to find unused colors.
• •The 🎗️ emoji only comes in yellow on all major platforms since 2021. Users have been requesting colored variants on Apple's forums for years, especially a pink version for Breast Cancer Awareness Month.
• •At the 1991 Tony Awards, presenters wearing the new red AIDS ribbon were specifically told not to explain what it meant on air, deliberately generating media curiosity that turned it into a global symbol overnight.

• •Because 🎗️ is always yellow, some people think it specifically means "support the troops." It's broader than that. Yellow ribbons have also been used for hostage campaigns, suicide prevention, and bone cancer awareness. Adding context in your caption helps.
• •During Breast Cancer Awareness Month, people use 🎗️ as a pink ribbon substitute. This works in context, but without the 🩷 heart alongside it, some readers may not make the connection since the emoji itself is yellow.

• •The red AIDS awareness ribbon debuted at the 45th Tony Awards on June 2, 1991. Host Jeremy Irons was the first person onstage wearing it. Presenters were told not to explain what it meant, creating deliberate media curiosity that turned the ribbon into an overnight global symbol.
• •At the 2024 Golden Globes, several attendees wore yellow ribbon pins for Israeli hostages held by Hamas, organized by the Bring Them Home advocacy group. Singer Montana Tucker wore one at the Grammys the same month.
• •Charlotte Haley's refusal to let corporations brand her peach breast cancer ribbon, and Estée Lauder's decision to simply change the color to pink and proceed without her, is one of the more darkly ironic origin stories in modern activism.
• •The 99% Invisible podcast devoted an episode to the history of awareness ribbons, tracing how the red AIDS ribbon spawned an entire visual language of advocacy that now includes hundreds of colors and causes.

• •🎗️ is a two-character sequence: U+1F397U+1F397 (REMINDER RIBBON) + U+FE0FU+FE0F (variation selector-16). Without the variation selector, it may render as a text glyph.
• •Discord shortcode: :reminder_ribbon::reminder_ribbon:. Slack shortcode: :reminder_ribbon::reminder_ribbon:. GitHub: :reminder_ribbon::reminder_ribbon:.
• •There's no color variant mechanism for this emoji (unlike skin tones). The color is determined by each platform's design, and all major platforms have converged on yellow since approximately 2021.

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