Emojis and Gray Hair

I spend many hours a day communicating online. In a mostly text-based work environment that involves a lot of emoji use. In a given day I might:

• wave when someone says hi 👋
• type a heart when someone does something I really love ❤️
• send a hug if someone needs one 🤗
• walk out the door at the end of the day🚶‍♀️
• bow when someone thanks me for a job well done 🙇‍♀️
• facepalm when I do something facepalmy 🤦‍♀️

And what’s neat is that people can choose the emoji person that mostly sort of matches their skin tone and hair color.

Unless you have gray hair. Then the emoji gods have decreed that you don’t do any of the things people use emoji for. You only have a friendly round face and wear your hair in a bun:

Emoji land has no gray-haired doctors, breastfeeding moms, laptop workers, haircutees, and on and on and on. I’ve had gray hair since my mid 30’s. Is it too much to ask to show some age (or hair color) representation?

Dancers don’t even have gray hair:

What’s up with that?

props Ryan Cowles for the gray hair-friendly shrug.