Eggplant emoji

The Eggplant emoji (πŸ†), also known by its Unicode name of Aubergine, is an emoji featuring a purple eggplant. Social media users have noted the emoji's phallic appearance and often use it as a euphemistic or suggestive icon during sexting conversations, to represent a penis.

The eggplant emoji as it appears on Twitter.

Development and usage history

The eggplant emoji was originally included in proprietary emoji sets from SoftBank Mobile and au by KDDI.[1] When Apple released the first iPhone in 2007, there was an emoji keyboard intended for Japanese users only,[2] which encoded them using SoftBank's Private Use Area scheme.[3] However, after iPhone users in the United States discovered that downloading Japanese apps allowed access to the keyboard, pressure grew to expand the availability of the emoji keyboard beyond Japan.[2]

As part of a set of characters sourced from SoftBank, au by KDDI, and NTT Docomo emoji sets, the eggplant emoji was approved as part of Unicode 6.0 in 2010 under the name "Aubergine".[4] In 2011, Apple made the emoji keyboard a standard iOS feature worldwide.[2] Global popularity of emojis then surged in the early to mid-2010s.[5] The eggplant emoji has been included in the Unicode Technical Standard for emoji (UTS #51) since its first edition (Emoji 1.0) in 2015.[4]

Character information
PreviewπŸ†
Unicode name AUBERGINE
Encodingsdecimalhex
Unicode127814U+1F346
UTF-8240 159 141 134F0 9F 8D 86
UTF-1655356 57158D83C DF46
GB 18030148 57 182 5694 39 B6 38
Numeric character reference🍆🍆
Shift JIS (au by KDDI)[6]243 144F3 90
Shift JIS (SoftBank 3G)[6]249 234F9 EA
7-bit JIS (au by KDDI)[1]121 11279 70
Emoji shortcode[7]:eggplant:
Google name (pre-Unicode)[8]EGGPLANT
CLDR text-to-speech name[9]eggplant
Google substitute string[8][γƒŠγ‚Ή]

Popularity on social media and cultural impact

The "aubergine" or "eggplant" emoji is commonly used to represent a penis in sexting conversations.[10][11] This usage has been noted to be common, particularly in the United States,[12][13] as well as in Canada.[14] In line with the eggplant emoji's common usage in sexual contexts, Emojipedia noted that the emoji is popularly paired with the peach emoji (πŸ‘), which is often used to represent buttocks[15] or female genitalia.[16]

The emoji was used as a reference to penis on Twitter as early as 2011.[10][17] By the mid-2010s, online magazine outlets wrote about how the emoji's usage in sexual contexts morphed society's connotations of the eggplant "from an innocuous vegetable to America's favorite shorthand for a throbbing cock."[14][18] Slate writer Amanda Hess stated that "the eggplant has risen to become America's dominant phallic fruit."[13] Writing for Cosmopolitan, Kathryn Lindsay stated that "this simple, previously neglected vegetable rocketed into stardom in a matter of years, thanks to our collective decision to deem it the universal symbol for dick."[18]

In 2018, Dictionary.com became the first major reference to add explanations for emojis,[16] although these explanations are only included on the editorial section of the website.[19]

The eggplant emoji has been referenced by popular culture numerous times. In 2017, Netflix won a bidding war to distribute a film titled The Eggplant Emoji.[20] The film was ultimately renamed The Package. In 2019, the cosmetics retailer Lush sold bath bombs resembling the eggplant emoji for Valentine's Day.[21] The company expanded their eggplant and peach emoji-themed product line the following year.[22]

Reception

As early as 2013, online media outlets have commented on the eggplant emoji's resemblance to a penis, with Complex listing it as one of "10 emojis to send while sexting."[23]

In April 2015, Instagram released a feature allowing users to hashtag emojis.[24] Shortly after, the platform banned the hashtag "πŸ†", as well as any references to "eggplant" from its search function.[24][25] Later in 2019, Facebook and Instagram both banned using the eggplant or peach emojis alongside "sexual statements about being horny."[26]

In 2016, the eggplant emoji's widespread usage as sexual innuendo led the American Dialect Society to vote it as the "Most Notable Emoji" of 2015.[10][27]

References

  1. Scherer, Markus; Davis, Mark; Momoi, Kat; Tong, Darick; Kida, Yasuo; Edberg, Peter. "Emoji Symbols: Background Dataβ€”Background data for Proposal for Encoding Emoji Symbols" (PDF). UTC L2/10-132.
  2. Cocozza, Paula (November 17, 2015). "Crying with laughter: how we learned how to speak emoji". The Guardian. Archived from the original on May 6, 2019. Retrieved July 28, 2017.
  3. Emojipedia. "Apple iPhone OS 2.2". Emojipedia.
  4. "πŸ† Eggplant". Emojipedia. Retrieved March 18, 2019.
  5. "Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year 2015 is…". Oxford Dictionaries Blog. November 16, 2015. Archived from the original on July 10, 2017. Retrieved July 28, 2017.
  6. Unicode Consortium. "Emoji Sources". Unicode Character Database.
  7. JoyPixels. "Emoji Alpha Codes". Emoji Toolkit.
  8. Android Open Source Project (2009). "GMoji Raw". Skia Emoji.
  9. Unicode, Inc. "Annotations". Common Locale Data Repository.
  10. "Eggplant emoji". Dictionary.com. February 28, 2018. Retrieved March 17, 2019.
  11. Godoy, Maria (April 10, 2015). "Cooking With Emoji: We're Taking Eggplant Back From The Bros". NPR. Retrieved March 18, 2019.
  12. Bromwich, Jonah Engel (October 21, 2015). "How Emojis Find Their Way to Phones". The New York Times. Retrieved March 17, 2019.
  13. Hess, Amanda (April 3, 2015). "Move Over, Banana". Slate. Retrieved March 18, 2019.
  14. Hay, Mark (April 25, 2017). "We're Going to Ruin the Eggplant Emoji for You Now". Tonic. Vice Media. Retrieved March 18, 2019.
  15. Kircher, Madison Malone (December 16, 2016). "Very Official Study Finds Peach Emoji Most Often Paired With Eggplant". Intelligencer. Retrieved March 18, 2019.
  16. Nazim, Hafeezah (March 7, 2018). "It's Confirmed: The Eggplant Emoji Symbolizes A Penis". Nylon. Retrieved March 18, 2019.
  17. Zimmer, Ben (May 2016). "Among the New Words". American Speech. 91 (2): 200–225. doi:10.1215/00031283-3633118. Retrieved December 21, 2021.
  18. Lindsay, Kathryn (August 5, 2016). "17 Times the Eggplant Emoji Was Too Real". Cosmopolitan. Retrieved March 18, 2019.
  19. Steinmetz, Katy (March 6, 2018). "A Major Dictionary Has Officially Added Emoji". Time. Retrieved December 21, 2021.
  20. Kit, Borys (January 26, 2017). "Netflix Wins Bidding War for 'Eggplant Emoji' From Ben Stiller, 'Workaholics' Creators (Exclusive)". The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved December 21, 2021.
  21. Krause, Amanda (January 4, 2019). "Lush fans are losing it over a new Valentine's Day bath bomb that looks like the eggplant emoji". Insider. Retrieved December 21, 2021.
  22. Bradford, Tayler (January 9, 2020). "Eggplant and peach-emoji bath products have arrived". New York Post. Retrieved December 22, 2021.
  23. Gallagher, Brenden (May 10, 2013). "10 Emojis to Send While Sexting". Complex. Retrieved March 18, 2019.
  24. Willett, Megan (July 6, 2015). "There's an easy way to hack Instagram's ban on the 'offensive' eggplant emoji hashtag". Business Insider. Retrieved March 18, 2019.
  25. Goldman, David (April 29, 2015). "Instagram blocks 'offensive' eggplant emoji hashtag". CNN. Retrieved March 18, 2019.
  26. Street, Mikelle (October 23, 2019). "Facebook and Instagram Are Censoring 'Horny' Emojis". Out. Retrieved December 21, 2021.
  27. "2015 Word of the Year is singular "they"". American Dialect Society. January 8, 2016. Retrieved March 18, 2019.
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