Shorts Emoji

A pair of shorts. The most versatile garment emoji in Unicode, 🩳 covers everything from swim trunks to gym shorts to jorts to cargo shorts. It was added in 2019 alongside 🩱 one-piece swimsuit and 🩲 briefs, giving texters a casual, warm-weather clothing option.

In texting, 🩳 is the universal summer emoji for clothing. "Finally shorts weather 🩳" is a message that gets sent millions of times every spring. It's casual, approachable, and carries zero baggage: unlike 👙 bikini (which can be flirty) or 🩲 briefs (which can be suggestive), shorts are just... shorts.

But the garment has a more contested history than the emoji suggests. Shorts were considered indecent for adults until the 1950s. The town of Honesdale, Pennsylvania literally banned them in 1938. And to this day, 41% of Americans say men should never wear shorts to the office. The one-place exception? Bermuda, where shorts with a blazer count as formal wear.

🩳 is a warm-weather staple in messaging. Usage spikes dramatically between May and September in the Northern Hemisphere, tracking almost exactly with temperature.

On social media, 🩳 shows up in three main lanes:

Seasonal excitement: The "shorts weather" genre. Spring arrival texts, summer countdown posts, first-warm-day celebrations. This is the single biggest use case.

Outfit and fashion: Jorts, cargo shorts, athletic shorts, Bermuda shorts. The jorts revival of 2024 brought 🩳 into fashion-TikTok territory. #jorts has over 7 million views on TikTok. The cargo shorts "dad energy" meme also keeps 🩳 in rotation as a humor emoji.

Athletic contexts: Running, basketball, gym workouts, hiking. 🩳 paired with 🏃 or 🏀 signals sport rather than fashion. Cargo shorts sales surged 178% from November 2024 to April 2025, driven by the outdoor activity boom.

The emoji is notably absent from flirty or suggestive contexts. It's one of the few clothing emojis that reads as purely casual in every situation.

Shorts have a surprisingly controversial origin. For most of Western history, showing your legs as an adult man was socially unacceptable.

The modern short was born in military necessity. During World War I, British soldiers stationed in Bermuda needed cooler uniforms for the tropical climate. Local tea shop owner Nathaniel Coxon had his staff's trousers cut above the knee in 1914, and Admiral Mason Berridge formalized the style for military use. By the 1920s, "Bermuda shorts" had become standard civilian clothing on the island.

But acceptance was slow everywhere else. Until the 1950s, there was an unwritten rule that adult men couldn't appear in public wearing shorts. Honesdale, Pennsylvania banned them outright in 1938, with the local newspaper declaring: "Honesdale is a modest town, not a bathing beach." It took Marlon Brando, rock 'n' roll, and the cultural liberalization of the 1950s-60s to make shorts acceptable for adults.

The emoji 🩳 was approved in Unicode 12.0 (2019) as U+1FA73 SHORTSU+1FA73 SHORTS, alongside 🩱 One-Piece Swimsuit and 🩲 Briefs.

Approved in Unicode 12.0 (2019) as U+1FA73 SHORTSU+1FA73 SHORTS. Added alongside 🩱 One-Piece Swimsuit (U+1FA71U+1FA71) and 🩲 Briefs (U+1FA72U+1FA72). Proposal document: L2/18-166.

1. 1914Nathaniel Coxon cuts staff trousers above the knee in Bermuda, creating the first modern shorts for tropical wear
2. 1938Honesdale, Pennsylvania bans shorts in public, calling them indecent
3. 1948Vogue magazine first uses the term 'Bermuda shorts,' marking their entry into fashion
4. 1960Hippie counterculture popularizes self-cut jean shorts (the first 'jorts')
5. 2016Wall Street Journal publishes article about cargo shorts' waning popularity, igniting the internet 'cargo shorts debate'
6. 2017French bus drivers in Nantes wear skirts to protest a workplace shorts ban during a heatwave, going viral worldwide
7. 2019Emoji approved in Unicode 12.0 as U+1FA73 SHORTS↗
8. 2024Jorts revival: #jorts reaches 7M+ views on TikTok, fueled by the early 2000s nostalgia cycle and celebrity adoption

Bermuda: The only place on Earth where shorts are formal wear. Bermudian men wear knee-length shorts with blazers, ties, knee-high socks, and dress shoes to business meetings, funerals, and Parliament. This isn't casual: it's the official national dress. The tradition dates to WWI-era British military uniforms adapted for tropical heat.

United States: Shorts are a battleground. A WSJ/Ipsos poll found 41% of Americans think men should never wear shorts to the office. Designer Tom Ford famously declared in 2011 that shorts should only be worn on the tennis court or beach. Cargo shorts specifically became a meme for uncool dad energy, though they're now staging a comeback.

France: In 2017, male bus drivers in Nantes wore skirts to work to protest a rule banning shorts during a heatwave. The stunt went viral. They won the right to wear shorts the next day.

UK: British schools often banned shorts for boys until recent heatwave-driven policy changes. In 2017, boys at Isca Academy in Exeter showed up in skirts to protest the no-shorts policy during hot weather.

Australia: Shorts are year-round standard wear. The relaxed dress culture means shorts appear in settings that would be unthinkable in the US or UK, including some business-casual offices.

• •Shorts were considered indecent for adults until the 1950s. The town of Honesdale, Pennsylvania banned them in 1938.
• •Bermuda is the only country where shorts are formal wear. Men wear them with blazers and ties to Parliament, court, and business meetings.
• •French bus drivers in Nantes wore skirts to work in June 2017 to protest a shorts ban during a heatwave. The company reversed the ban the next day.
• •The Wall Street Journal's 2016 article declaring cargo shorts dead became one of the paper's most-debated fashion pieces, triggering an internet culture war.
• •Cargo shorts sales surged 178% from November 2024 to April 2025, proving the rumors of their death were greatly exaggerated.
• •#jorts has over 7 million views on TikTok. The jort revival of 2024 was fueled by early 2000s nostalgia and celebrity adoption, with Hailey Bieber as an early trendsetter.
• •A WSJ/Ipsos poll found 41% of Americans think men should never wear shorts to the office. Boomers are the strongest opponents.
• •The term "Bermuda shorts" first appeared in Vogue in 1948, decades after British soldiers created the style in WWI-era Bermuda.

• •🩳 is sometimes confused with 🩲 (briefs) on platforms where the designs look similar. Check context: if they're talking about outerwear, it's shorts. If underwear, it's briefs.
• •Some users treat 🩳 as specifically swim trunks. On most platforms, the design is generic enough to represent any type of shorts, not just swimwear.

• •Bermuda Shorts as national dress: The only place on Earth where shorts with a blazer count as formal attire, worn to Parliament and funerals since the WWI era.
• •French bus drivers protest (2017): Nantes drivers wore skirts to protest a shorts ban during a heatwave. The viral moment led to immediate policy reversal.
• •Cargo shorts debate (2016): The Wall Street Journal's declaration that cargo shorts were over became a defining internet culture war between comfort and style.
• •Jorts revival (2024): Jean shorts returned as a major TikTok trend with 7M+ views. Hailey Bieber helped lead the charge. The fashion-vs-cringe debate became content.
• •Tom Ford's decree (2011): The designer declared that "shorts should only be worn on the tennis court or at the beach," sparking ongoing pushback from shorts defenders.

• •Codepoint: U+1FA73. No variation selector needed.
• •Shortcodes: :shorts: (GitHub, Slack, Discord).
• •Added in Unicode 12.0 (2019). Not available on iOS 12 or earlier, Android 9 or earlier.
• •Related emojis: 🩱 (U+1FA71 ONE-PIECE SWIMSUIT), 🩲 (U+1FA72 BRIEFS), 👖 (U+1F456 JEANS).

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