GRAZIA: The Period Emoji Is Here And The Two Year Battle To Get It Approved Shows Just How Much Period Stigma Still Exists

by Georgia Aspinall 06 02 2019

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After two years of campaigning, asking for public support and in the end combining forces with the NHS Blood campaign to create a blood drop emoji, it was approved: there is now a blood drop emoji linked to menstruation.

Plan International UK were locked into a stalemate with Unicode Consortium - the organisation that approves what emojis become part of this new, global language - who had left their original proposal for a period pants emoji 'forever on hold', they told us.

The charity had originally pitched a design of a pair of pants with a couple of drops of blood on it, 'It was very heavily period driven, and that is very much what our work is, so we were really sad [when it was rejected],' but unfortunately, an explicit link to periods was just 'too uncomfortable' for the organisation to approve, Carmen Barlow (digital strategy and development manager at Plan International UK) speculates. Why? Well, according to Plan International UK, it's because of the very reason they began the campaign.

'I think it's a lot about the stigma and the taboos around periods,' says Carmen, 'I think it's actually really symptomatic of the silence that surrounds this, and why we actually still need to do campaigns around busting period stigma because that was too uncomfortable I think for them to take forward

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Would you have used the originally proposed emoji or do you think it’s too graphic?

Do you think period stigma exists? Have you ever felt any shame in talking openly about periods?

** note in the UK, we call underwear pants**