Thong Sandal Emoji

🩴 is the thong sandal, better known as the flip-flop. One shoe, Y-shaped rubber strap, toe post, and a flat sole. You're looking at the oldest form of footwear known to humans, now rendered as a 16x16 pixel icon.

The emoji almost always means summer. Beach, pool, holiday, long weekend, sweltering Tuesday in July. People use it when the dress code disappears and when they want to signal "I'm not at work right now." In texts it reads as relaxed, unbothered, barefoot-adjacent. Emojipedia describes it as Apple's orange-strapped version becoming the de facto visual for the emoji across most phones.

What the emoji doesn't carry is flirty or romantic coding. 🩴 is almost stubbornly literal: it means sandals, it means casual, it means somebody's toes are about to be in sand. Compared to the bikini 👙 or cocktail 🍹, which lean into vacation fantasy, the flip-flop is just... the shoe. Practical. Rubber. $12.

Usage spikes hard between May and August in the northern hemisphere, then goes quiet until December when Australians and Brazilians take over. The emoji is standard issue for beach trip plans, pool day invitations, and "I'm out of office" replies that want to feel a bit warmer than an auto-responder.

Brands use it constantly. REEF, the surf footwear company that actually submitted the proposal to Unicode, uses it in nearly every summer campaign. Tropical Smoothie Cafe built a whole annual holiday around the shoe (National Flip Flop Day, the Wednesday after Memorial Day in the US) and the emoji anchors all the social promos.

On TikTok it shows up in "pack with me" vacation content, summer Spotify playlists, and pool day GRWM posts. On Instagram it's everywhere in captions for beach houses, resorts, and the kind of holiday photo where somebody's feet are dangling over a pool. The one place you rarely see it: professional or LinkedIn-adjacent content, where the flip-flop is still a polite signal for "I am not taking this seriously."

Flip-flops spent 6,000 years without a proper name and 15 years without an emoji. Both finally arrived in 2020.

The earliest known thong sandals come from ancient Egypt around 4,000 BCE, made from papyrus and palm leaves. Tutankhamun was buried with over 80 pairs, some woven from gold. In Japan, rice-straw zori became standard during the Heian period (794 to 1185 CE) and traveled with Japanese plantation workers to Hawaii in the 1880s, where they picked up the local name "slippah." New Zealand businessman Morris Yock trademarked the word "jandal" in 1957, a portmanteau of "Japanese" and "sandal." Dunlop imported 300,000 pairs to Australia in 1959, where they became known as "thongs" and, eventually, a national symbol. Brazil's Havaianas launched in 1962, copied the zori's rice-grain sole, and went on to sell 250 million pairs a year.

The emoji story is shorter and more corporate. In 2019, the surf brand REEF partnered with Emojination and Jennifer 8. Lee to petition the Unicode Consortium for a flip-flop emoji. The proposal argued that the global flip-flop market was worth $7 billion and that no existing emoji represented casual, unisex, open-toed footwear. Unicode approved it in early 2020, and 🩴 landed on keyboards as part of Emoji 13.0 that September. Unicode filed it under the neutral, oddly formal name "thong sandal."

1. -4000Earliest known thong sandals in ancient Egypt, woven from papyrus and palm leaves.
2. 794Japanese zori standardized during the Heian period, made from rice straw.
3. 1880Japanese plantation workers bring zori to Hawaii, where they become known as "slippahs."
4. 1957Morris Yock trademarks "jandal" in New Zealand on October 4.
5. 1959Dunlop imports 300,000 pairs to Australia. Thongs are standard beachwear within a year.
6. 1962Havaianas launches in Brazil with rubber soles copying the zori's rice-grain texture.
7. 2019REEF, Emojination, and Jennifer 8. Lee submit proposal L2/19-104 to Unicode arguing for a flip-flop emoji.
8. 2020Unicode approves 🩴 as part of Emoji 13.0. Released on phones September 2020.

• •Ancient Egyptians wore papyrus thong sandals 6,000 years ago. Images of them appear in murals dated to around 4,000 BCE, and at least 80 pairs were buried with Tutankhamun.
• •The name "jandal" is a portmanteau of "Japanese" and "sandal." Morris Yock trademarked it in New Zealand on October 4, 1957.
• •Brazil's Havaianas sells around 250 million pairs per year across 100+ countries and holds 80% of the Brazilian rubber slipper market. The Brazilian government added them to a list of culturally essential items alongside rice and beans.
• •The Kenyan company Ocean Sole recycled 750,000 discarded flip-flops from ocean shores in 2023, turning them into art sculptures.
• •The Flipflopi is a 9-meter sailing boat made entirely from 9 tonnes of beach plastic, including 30,000 flip-flops. It has sailed from Kenya to Tanzania to Uganda to protest single-use plastic.
• •Queensland banned its public school teachers from wearing thongs to work in 1978. Australia also banned them at Australia Day citizenship ceremonies in 2020.
• •Barack Obama was the first US president photographed wearing flip-flops, on vacation in Hawaii. Fashion commentators Clinton Kelly, Stacy London, and Tim Gunn all expressed disdain.
• •The US brand REEF submitted Unicode proposal L2/19-104 in 2019, arguing the $7 billion global flip-flop market deserved representation. They partnered with Emojination and Jennifer 8. Lee. Unicode approved it the following year.
• •Podiatrists generally advise against daily flip-flop use. Wearing them too often is linked to plantar fasciitis, Achilles tendonitis, and turf toe because the shoe has no arch support and forces a flat footstrike.