For ages, the mark of a beautiful smile was a wide grin and pearly-white teeth. Not anymore.
Turns out that several companies (Apple included) are rolling out emojiis that allow you to offer a smiley-face in a multiracial skin tone.
So, now you can offer a mixed/multiracial smile (though, it’d be nice to have non-coffee-stained pearly-whites too).
Here’s a question, though: did we need the multiracial emojii? Would it not have been better to leave everyone with just the one choice — the yellow smiley-face? Why do we need to pick and choose and segregate when it comes to emoticons as well?
4 Comments on “What Color Is Your Smile?”
Hold up? Why is this even a question?? We should be questioning why there is a vhs tape emoji. Of all the icons available you are questioning skin tone? Not the 12 different representations of plant life, phases of the moon, transportation, 50 different kinds of food, varieties of office supplies. 10 different clocks. At least 3 mailboxes. That kind of variety is understandable, but having a variety of races included is something to question???? Take a second and think about that.
Thanks for writing. I think you may have misinterpreted the question and my intent in asking it. I was not offering the opinion that having emoticons of different races was a bad idea. In fact, I was not offering any opinion of my own. Rather, I was asking a question that has been asked in related contexts about whether we should as a society endeavor to be “colorblind” or whether it’s important to represent the range of races in popular culture. In asking the question, I hoped to elicit exactly what was elicited — an open and frank dialogue about the issue that included the opinions of others expressing to me their thoughts, rather than me talking at them, so as to better understand the feelings of people out there who are following my work or communicating with me on a regular basis.
As an aside, I think if you look at my body of work, including my article about the absence of characters of color in the movie “Frozen” you will see that I feel strongly in favor of representing the full range of races and ethnicities in popular culture. Here’s the link to the article: http://goodmenproject.com/featured-content/the-absence-of-color-in-frozen-kerj/
Meantime, thanks for writing. I do hope you will continue to follow my work. All the best, Alex
When I updated the OS on my phone recently, I was surprised to get a CHOICE of “color” for a smiley face… thumbs up… bald-headed guy… grandma… AND MORE! I wondered the same thing, “Do we really need multiracial emojii? And, why do we have to identify ourselves with a color on our emoji when we are telling our children, it’s not the color of skin that should identify a person!” Interesting things to ponder!! So glad I saw your post via our Facebook page (When You’re STUCKinindiana).My mind is still milling this over. Might write about it on the blog. If so, I’ll share with you on your Facebook page!
c
Thanks for connecting on FB and Twitter and thanks for writing in with your comment. It is a question that I was glad to see so much honest and open dialogue about. Look forward to seeing your blog on the subject.
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