Sexist Emoji?

Emoji are revolutionizing the way we communicate while also communicating gender stereotypes about women. Cristen and Caroline decode the gendered patterns of emoji use and why some think they don't speak loudly enough for girls and women.

Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to stuff Mom never told you. From how Stuff
Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Christmas and I'm Caroline. And Caroline. We've talked about all
different types of communication and how gender plays a role
in that, and we're going to do the same thing

(00:24):
today talking about one of my favorite forms of communication.
Emoji's nice and it is emoji's not just like emoji
and emoji as plural. Yeah, so we are deferring to
the AP style guide as well. We should exactly because
I'm also an editor, not not just a podcaster. I

(00:47):
am at my heart, I am an editor. Yeah, and
the and the AP decided that because of its clarity,
the plural of emoji is emoji's okay, So listeners, if
you are an emoji plural user, which I was before
I learned about the AP style rule, then now now

(01:07):
we know it'll save you a letter. Thank god, it's settled. Um.
But we're going to talk about, obviously emojis, but we're
going to talk to about emoticons and gender and before
we get into the meat of this conversation, because there
actually is some important stuff to discuss, and there are
emojis for meat, yes, particularly like the chicken ling or

(01:31):
the drumstick. Thank goodness, so I can describe all of
my meals. That's all I need because I only eat
it medieval times. So really all I need is that
turkey leg emogy, and that's that's a pricey meal plan. Caroline, Oh,
I know it comes with the entertainment. That meat isn't cheap.
Tell me about it. Um, But I really like, though,
if we if we go back to pre emoticon days,

(01:54):
how Vladimir and Nabokov told The New York Times in
nineteen sixteen, line, I often think there should exist a
special typographical sign for a smile, a supine round bracket.
Of course, Nabokov would say, supine round bracket. You not
a fan? No, I mean I'm a fan. I like
it's fine, But you know he did write about a

(02:16):
young girl in a very not so great fashion. Yeah,
that's true. So what would be the emoji you would
use to describe your feelings about Lolita then, Caroline, Oh,
probably the one that's all straight lines across, you know,
just like two lines for the eyes and one straight
line for the mouth. Like I enjoyed it, but I'm
also like m M yeah. See, and and that communicated

(02:42):
your sentiment to me so effectively. Yeah. But I guess
I also have that face like a lot of the
because I actually didn't read Lolita until after college, and
so once I did read it, and I mean I
did enjoy it, you know, I did enjoy the writing
and everything, but I also had that face at thinking

(03:03):
back at guys who'd recommended Lolita and like the way
that they recommended it, and it just kind of excused
me out a little. Same emoji for those guys. Yeah,
same emogi. Okay, So that's I'm going to consider that
emoji face now on my phone, the Nabokov, the Caroline,
the skeptical and somewhat disapproving Caroline emoji. Yes, yes that. Henceforth, listeners,

(03:28):
it shall be named UM. I really enjoyed though, this
swift Key sponsored survey that analyzed the most popular emojis
by country. Um, Australians. I know there's so many of
you listening. Uh here's the thing, y'all use the most
simples indicating alcohol nice twice the worldwide average. Apparently also

(03:50):
above average juice of drug related emojis se above average
bt dubs um, as well as holidays and junk foods.
I mean, it sounds like overall Australian are having a
good time. Y'all are just having a great time. What
are the drug emojis besides? And they're a pill? Oh
there's a there's a syringe, isn't there there's a syringe?
Oh my god. I hope that there's a needle sharing
program for that syringe emoji. Well, hopefully those emojis are

(04:14):
just symbolic of you know, feelings and not actual syringes,
I hope. So it's like, hey, hey, lady, what are
you doing later tonight? And it's just like fifteen syringes
and response you would send back the Caroline skeptical phase
obviously Americans. Meanwhile, I apparently love the egg plant emoji,

(04:37):
which I have never used. Really, I've never used it
because for the longest time I didn't understand this is
like so typical for me. I'm like fifty years behind
all popular culture, but like I didn't know what the
egg planet emogi meant. For the longest time, I was like,
why are these people using the egg plant? I get

(04:58):
it now, I assure you. People are is wild about
eggplant parmesan. God, yeah, I love it. Canadians, though, you
threw the researchers for a loop with your your use
of money, violence and sports related emoji. Yeah, Canadians, they
only seem polite under the surface, they're seething with all

(05:19):
of those knife and gun emojis. UM, and Russians tend
to send a lot of cold weather symbols, not surprisingly,
the French apparently send hearts all the time bljere and
then the Arabic speakers use flowers and plants the most.
How pleasant it's pleasant. I think they have the you know,

(05:39):
the most charming emoji's use. Oh well, yeah, I guess
that is. Yeah, it's more charming than egg plant. But now,
of course, this is our uh sort of latent request
to our international listeners to let us know whether this
survey is reflective of what you think that your national
emoji style is. Um, but Caroline, talk about you and me.

(06:01):
What are what are our favorites? Um? Okay. The ones
that I used the most are either like smiley happy ones.
That's nice. Um, probably use those the most. Uh. The
other one I use is like the the anxiety face,
which it's got like the almost the lightning bolt looking mouth.

(06:24):
Do you know what I'm talking about. Yes, it's yeah,
And it's like looking down and like I would you
know now, I wish we were on our Facebook live
thing rather than in this podcast studio. Makes it hard
to I really enjoy listening to you describe emojis keep going.
But that's the one I use a lot too, for like,
oh my god, I can't believe this is happening. Are

(06:44):
there any objects that you use a lot? Are you
mostly faces? No? I think I'm I think i'm oh, well,
heart the heart, But other than that, I think I'm
mostly faces. Yeah, I'm pretty French as well. I send
a lot of hearts, especially with tweets and just sending
hearts all the time to our kind stuff. Mom never
told you friends online and Caroline. I have my phone

(07:08):
with me so that I can look at my most
recently used emojis. Let's see what we've got here. It's
probably hearts. You used used some flames in a text
to me the other day. Oh yeah, I like the flames.
Let's see my most my frequently used are all of
the hearts, every single heart variety, the laugh crying emoji

(07:29):
one hundred, the flame, the dancing woman, um, and the taco.
I mean, that really sums up my life. The taco
was one of the new editions, right, one of the
because I haven't updated my iOS in like seventeen years,
which is impressive considering the iPhone. I wonder you just
use the faces you got to get the Is there

(07:51):
is there a unicorn yet? Yes? Oh my god. Okay,
let me just like do a little like quantum leap
and come back in time and say that the unicorn
is and will be my most used one as soon
as I update my iOS. It's just such a pain,
and like, my phone is so full of crap and
you need so much space to update tiny violence for you.

(08:15):
I'm not I'm not living my best life. Okay. So
listeners might be wondering, now, though, why on earth would
we be talking about emojis? How can that possibly be serious?
How can that possibly relate to stuff I've never told
you at all? It's so frivolous, right well, I mean yeah,
it could seem frivolous, but in a way, emoji are

(08:36):
really changing how we communicate with each other. I mean,
just look at how the Oxford Dictionary Word of the
Year was not a word. It was the cry laughing
emoji and no surprise because people have posted that emoji
to Twitter alone more than one billion times. Yeah, I

(08:57):
mean emoji, just like emoticons before of them, help people
communicate to each other the sense that like the subtext
to a message or a tweet. I mean, it totally
makes sense that they are helping kind of bolster our communication. Absolutely,
because you have so little context for text messages. You
don't get in tone inflection and oh man, if you

(09:21):
get a text from someone and it ends in a period,
does that mean no. I I just yesterday send an
email to a co worker with a joke in it
and had a winky face, and when he responded, he
had no winky face, and so I took his his
response as serious and answered him as such. And then

(09:42):
when he replied to me again, he was like, I
can't believe you didn't get my joke. I can't believe
you took that seriously. I was like, bro, Bro, You've
got to have an emoticon. Ya. Sarcasm is challenging for
me to detect in text only format. Um Also, though,
when it comes to gender, there's and a lot of
conversation in the weeks leading up to when we're recording

(10:04):
this podcast about how emojis seemed to perpetuate gender stereotypes
and as for why something is seemingly insignificant as these
old characters on our phone might seem. Uh, Sophie Cleman
over at Mike says, they are worth talking about quote
because it's a small, yet clear example of a social

(10:25):
scheme but still manages to reinforce traditional gender stereotypes at
every term, even when the issue is as seemingly innocuous
as a tiny digital face. WHOA. So people are saying
that emojis are sexist or that they're being used in
sexist ways. Not well, they might be used in sexist ways,
that depends on the individual, but more that they Yeah,

(10:48):
they're kind of subtly sexist by only providing a very
narrow and stereotypical representation of the girl emojis as like
the princess and the bride rather than a lady police officer, yeah,
dancing woman, and most of the active emojis, the sports
ones like the bike rider and the swimmer, all that

(11:10):
all dudes, all boy emojis. The basketball player looks like
it might be a girl, but upun closer inspection it's
just a guy with shaggy hair, you know, so always.
The Maxi Pad company did a whole ad campaign around this,
created by Leo Burnett, which is brilliant. They were the

(11:31):
ones who started the whole like a girl hashtag campaign
a little while back that went viral, and now they're
doing the same thing with emojis. And it's a good
video and it like gives girls phones and has them
talking about their emoji use and kind of points out
how there aren't many girl emojis that are active and
reflect like what they do on a day to day basis,

(11:52):
and the you know, the girls getting mad about it,
they get fired up. Yeah, I love angry women. But
before we get like even angrier about gender stereo typical
use of emojis or gender stereotypical emojis at all period,
we should probably inform the people of where emojis even
came from. Yeah, that's a good idea. We'd love to
talk about history, right, we love history, especially smiley face history.

(12:12):
So the thing is humans have been all about pictorial
representations of words since pretty much forever. I mean before
we had like the Phoenician alphabet, we had hieroglyphics, and
other kinds of images to get our points across um
and so for that reason, though, emojis are sometimes derisively

(12:34):
referred to as the new hieroglyphics. Oh, we're taking our
culture step backward. Oh why not? I like hieroglyphics. Pizza emoji. Yeah,
the dancing lady and the pizza emoji, just to know
the set in a night. That's Carol hieroglyphics. What about
a little wineglass too? Oh yeah, no, bring it all.
Oh that is another one I use. I do use

(12:55):
the drinking drink ees, although I do send the drinking
drinkies to friends sometimes my boyfriend. My boyfriend is sober,
but he does make a great cocktail for me. So
but anyway, yeah, sorry, we got off track yet again. Well,
steering us back on track, we have Adam Sternberg, helpfully
over at New York Magazine, who dives into that prehistoric

(13:19):
pictorial representation of our words. So first, as he notes,
we had something called pictograms, which are essentially pictures of
actual things, like when you draw a sunshine indicating a sunshine,
and these go back to ancient Mesopotamia, China, and Egypt.
And then from there we figure out things called logograms,

(13:39):
which are pictures to symbolize words, kind of like the
money symbols, like a dollar sign or you're a signer exactly, Caroline,
I'm picking up on it. And then finally we have ideograms,
which are pictures to represent an idea, which might translate
an emoji speak to say, the nail painting emoji if

(14:03):
you are meaning I just don't have time to listen
to you right now. Oh, I used that to symbolize
an actual manicure the other day. Am I too literal?
That's the thing, though, that people love about emojis is
that they're open to interpretation. I like, though, I like
the idea of using that to me, and I just
I just ain't got time to listen to you. And

(14:26):
one bit of emoji prehistory I really enjoyed was from
a piece that Clive Thompson wrote in Woman's zene Um.
He notes how in the eighteenth century especially, people really
love these things called Rebus puzzles, which are kind of
like proto emoji or is. He describes them deep history
ancestors of emojis. So the emogi equivalent of a Rebus

(14:51):
puzzle would be, say, like using emojis only to ask
someone out for like pizza and wine. So maybe you'd
send like a emoji of two people and then a car,
and then a slice of pizza, and then a glass
of wine and then a question mark. Oh yeah, no,
I remember those, Okay, I never knew what they were.
Called Rebus Puzzles. Yeah, my one of my mom's favorite books. Actually,

(15:14):
if you ever come over to my parents house with it,
just without you, just to hang out, she may very
well show you this book called c dB and it's
a book of Rebus puzzles. And so c dB, you
have the letter C and then the letter D and
then a picture of a B and it's this whole
story told through Rebus puzzles, and she just she loves it. No,

(15:35):
I remember those as kids. My dad and I used
to like, you know, quote unquote read them or I
guess you're literally reading them before bed. And I remember
getting like super upset if they were too easy to
figure out. I wanted like every word to be an
image almost well, and they are fun to figure out,
and they take some mental prowess to decipher. But the

(15:57):
thing is, Caroline much like today, back in the eighteenth century,
and they existed before the eighteenth century. But back then,
Rebus puzzle snobs considered those picture messages suitable only for
dullards and children, kind of like people whoop poop poo emoji. Today. Oh,

(16:17):
I just enjoy emogie so much. Yeah, but I mean
it's the people who would refer to them as so
there's just some new hieroglyphics, so kids don't know how
to write words anymore. Although I think that that's kind
of a separate issue. Yeah, yeah, that is a separate issue.
But now I get to leap forward in time to
everyone's favorite decade right now, the nine nineties, Yes, Kristen,

(16:38):
that's right, the era of Neon wind suits and Zach
Morris um. But in the mid nineties in Japan, there
was this guy named Suga Taka Kurita who's working for
DoCoMo pagers and he gets this idea. He has the
idea that users might like little cartoons symbols to communicate

(16:58):
with each other. And the first that he helps develop
is a cartoon heart. And this, my friends, is histories
first emoji. So cute. I imagine it would be so cute.
I like to imagine a little black and white like
pixelated heart. My heart is pixelated for you, I mean,
and surely you would be excited about that, because pagers,

(17:20):
you know, they're rather unimpressive. Like I can spell hello
with with numbers only. That's almost as exciting as when
you were a kid and learned to spell blood on
your calculator. Anybody remember that? Yeah, I thought you were
going to talk about spelling blood with your fingers. I
still can't do that. I learned that in high school
because I was home schooled, right. And then as DoCoMo

(17:43):
and others entered the cell phone game, the company expanded
its emoji roster to one hundred and seventies six that
they were mostly faces, but you also had things like
musical notes and stuff like that because kids kids those days,
kids those days loved to be able to use these
early emojis to clarify messages and avoid misunderstanding the same

(18:05):
reason we would use them today. But since those early
emoji were proprietary to DoCoMo, they showed up as what
are referred to as garbage characters, which is what I
also like to refer to rude people as um on
non DoCoMo devices. And this reminds me actually of one
of my best guy friends had an old phone for

(18:26):
so long, and I love texting emoji to him because
he would just get strings of garbage characters and it
would frustrate him to no end. Um. But as emoji
popularity picks up, and also the Japanese cell phone market
starts booming, you have this group called Unicode standard step
in and Unicode is a nonprofit volunteer group founded by

(18:48):
a Google guy named Mark Davis that standardizes digital text
across different software. So it's kind of like the Rosetta
Stone for digital text. Um. And essentially they're the ones
that we can thank for. You know, me sending my
mom and emoji. She has a different type of cell
phone and she gets, you know, the emoji and not

(19:09):
a garbage character. Um. Yeah, I don't don't hurt your
mom's feelings by sending her a garbage character. I never
would never would. Um. But Unicode, which I'm only noting
this because it will be relevant in a moment. Unicode,
which is overwhelmingly dudes. This is back in the day.
Still they were aware of DoCoMo and its emojis, but

(19:30):
they suspected that it was just gonna be a passing fad.
But of course it wasn't so. Fast forward to the
two thousands and US telecom vendors really want to start
working with Japanese characters, but all of the emoji proprietary
issues and the garbage characters are causing problems. So Unicode

(19:51):
steps in and they standardize everything in two thousand seven,
And when Apple releases its iPhone that year, it actually
buried an emoji keyboard in that phone to appeal to
Japanese consumers, and they were like, Americans aren't gonna care
about this or just gonna like bury it, But of
course we all know that it was unburied in the

(20:12):
rest's history. Well, so buried along with all of those
emojis is the smiley poop, which, fun fact, I never
knew this. It's actually considered good luck because the Japanese
love buns just as much as we do, and their
word for poop sounds a lot like the word for luck,
and so why not have fun and make the poop

(20:35):
symbol a symbol of good luck. Yeah, so that's why
the poop symbol exists in our emoji vocabulary. I never
questioned it. Maybe, yeah, maybe that's just something bad about me,
but I never questioned it. I just accepted that there
was a smiley, googly eyed poop pile. Well, apparently the
googly eyes were an add on from some Apple designers

(20:56):
somewhere along the way. But um, yeah, there is significant
to the poop emoji and this changes the whole meaning
it's the symbol of good luck. Yeah, I was gonna say,
I was gonna say that the google eyes make it
more palatable. Yeah, but not so much. Um, But people
that might still be wondering, like, ladies, ladies, ladies, where

(21:19):
is the sexism here? Are you saying that the poop
emoji is sexist or something that it's looking at you
the wrong way? What could possibly be going on? Why
am I always getting cat called by piles of crap
on the street. Well, I mean fast forward to today
and you have this rampant use of emojis, and it's
and they're especially popular of course among younger kids, and

(21:40):
those younger kids are seeing all of these gender stereotypical emoji.
I mean, what can what can you be when you
grow up? If you're a girl, according to the emoji alphabet,
you could be like a dancer, You could be someone
who looks kind of like a playboy, bunny like the
Twinsies one. Yeah, one's always been a little curious to me. Um,

(22:02):
you could work at a salon, or be a princess
or a bride. Yeah, well, I mean, what more could
a woman want? Honestly? Well, and there's the hair flip emoji, which,
as you pointed out, what was it actually? Yeah, so
the hair flip emoji, which, by the way, the other night,
when I was looking at the sources, I had to
text Kristen and I included the hair flip emoji, and

(22:23):
I said, it is this one, the hair flip emoji.
I never knew what she was. She's got like her
hand up by her shoulder like you should be placing
a tray onto it or something like. She works for
a catering company. And I was reading something that was
saying that like, oh, you know, we love our emoji
so much, but we want them to mean more than

(22:45):
perhaps they were intended to mean, and so we've renamed
the service desk woman the hair flip emoji. And I
was like, what what? What did any of these things
mean that I just read? And so I went down
a little internet rabbit hole and discover which I mean,
I don't know a lot of people already know this.
I did not know any of this, um but the
woman that symbolizes the hair flip of like again, I

(23:07):
don't have time to listen to you, or like I'm
feeling so hot today. She she was meant to be
like a helpful lady behind a desk, pointing you in
the right direction. Who knew and here to me, she's
just been flipping her hair the whole time. But with
that always emoji add going viral recently, Caroline, there's been

(23:27):
a lot of focus on the hair flip emoji and
all of the other lady emojis, and like the hashtag
like a girl at it went viral, and so you
have a lot of media outlets talking about and calling
for Unicode directly to broaden its gender representation. I mean,
you have a few years ago, I think it was
in late when Unicode finally got the memo and added

(23:52):
skin color options for some of the people, not all
of the people, but some of the people. And they
might similarly add gender options at some point down the road,
but it doesn't really look like that's going to happen,
at least not in the next round of emojis that
we're going to get yeah, because it seems like Unicode
is focusing more on offering male versions of the gender

(24:16):
stereotypical female emojis, so they would have the counterpoint to
the princess. So I'll have a prince, a groom, a
guy dancing, thank god, finally men can dance. Um. And
then they're going to have new sports emojis, things like
a wrestler, but watch out. I just heard that like
some wrestler caught herpies off of a mat recently, so

(24:38):
like watch out. Um, maybe the wrestler emoji with like
a caution emoji nexte um, and then maybe a water
polo because why would we not need that? And handball.
But these are all gonna be do yeah well, and
I like them. But looking at the list of the

(24:58):
possible emojis that they're gonna a vote on, one of
the few women is a pregnant lady, which I mean,
I see how that's useful, but I was like, you're
not helping matters any But the one request I have
to Unicode is to please not put the terrifying clown
face emoji that some sick person suggests. Does it like
the its face or is it just a clown. Listen,

(25:21):
I'm not a fan of clown, but also an emoji
version of a clown is it's Yeah, it's something out
of nightmares. I probably probably don't need it. I could
probably take a lady firefighter over a clown. I think.
I think that's what I would choose. There, you go
right to Unicode. Um, No, they'll just listen to this episode.
So we're kind of just going to have to put

(25:41):
a pin in the whole gender stereotyping with emojis because
it's sort of out of our control. I mean, people
are directly requesting Unicode do it, and they absolutely listened
when people said, hey, how about some ethnicity options here.
I always go with the yellow though, just because you're
constantly queen Zy that would be green, or maybe that

(26:03):
would mean I'm a witch. She's a witch. Yeah, I
stick with the yellow skin tone. Okay, is that your
Is that your neutral? Yeah? Yeah, that is my neutral.
I have to wear so much, so much foundation to
cover that up. Well, one thing I was curious about
with all this emoji conversation, especially the attention to how
girls use them and how stereotypical a lot of the

(26:27):
girl ones are I wondered whether there is a gendered
use to emojis and also their predecessors, old school emoticons.
Caught emoticons are already considered old school totally, and we're
gonna talk about that. We come right back from a
quick break, Caroline. You know what I'm a fan of

(26:52):
what the native template from squarespace dot com. It has
made my personal website look better than ever before. And
you know how easy it was? Really easy because you
don't have to know how to code to build your
website with squar space dot com. Yeah, they have amazing
and beautiful templates to choose from. Whether you're promoting yourself,

(27:15):
your yoga studio, your art practice, your podcast, whatever you do.
Squar space has a template and easy to use tools
for you and better yet, stuff I never told you listeners.
You can head on over to squar space and get
ten off your order and a free domain name by
using the code mom stuff. So what are you waiting for?

(27:37):
Build that website? Go to squarespace dot com use code
mom stuff for ten percent off your order and a
free domain. And now back to the show. So the
desire for broader emoji representation, it makes a lot of sense.
But the question we know want to tackle and can

(28:00):
to have the podcast is whether emojis are a gendered
form of communication, Because I gotta say, Caroline, I do
use emojis all the time in my texting with lady friends. Yeah,
for sure, I use them. Well, I use them with everybody. Honestly,
the person I use them with the most is my boyfriend.

(28:20):
Like we we have communicated strictly in emojis before. Do
you all have and if this is t M I,
you don't have to answer, but do you you all
have a go to emoji? Honestly it's it's a lot
of smiley faces and hearts, like going back to the
ones I use most often. Um, But it is to

(28:40):
indicate like this is sarcasm, or this is I'm saying
this in an excited way, or I'm really happy about this,
so that we don't fall into the trap of like, wait,
there was a period at the end of that. Is
he mad at me? Is she mad at me? What
could that mean? Well? And the thing is linguists are
paying attention to this. I mean, people might be snabs

(29:02):
about emoji use, but linguists are taking them very seriously.
And Stanford trained linguists. Tyler Schnabelen is one of those people,
and he talked to the New Republic about that, and
he says that we would assume that women use emojis
more because we're supposedly more emotionally driven communicators. We want

(29:23):
to really get our point across and as contextual of
a way as possible. And the thing is that is
somewhat reflected in our emoticon use. We're still in the
early days, unfortunately, of emoji linguistic research, but it does
seem like with our emoticon use, women are a little
bit likelier to send those winky faces. Yeah, well winky faces,

(29:45):
but also exclamation points um, which could be a whole
other episode. But yeah, my boyfriend I also obsessively use
exclamation points. I don't think there's anything that we say
to each other that only has a single punctuation mark. Like,
if it's going to have an exclamation point, it's going
to have five. If it's gonna have a question mark,
it's going to have at least two. What about semi
Colon's Oh lord, well, I tend to stay away from

(30:08):
writing essays. I'm not writing any Atlantic think pieces to
my boyfriend so I do stay away from the semicolons.
But the thing is, when it comes to emoticons, while
research has shown that women are likelier to use them,
it's not like we're throwing them out left and right. Um.
And And the main study that people point to it

(30:29):
was a tiny, tiny study from two thousand and ten
that took place at Rice University, and the participant pool
was only twenty one college students. UM. But they analyze
thousand texts that this group of college students sent, and
just four percent of them contained emoticons, and women were
twice as likely to have sent one of those texts.

(30:51):
But there is some interesting nuance in this, because when
guys did use emoticons, they tended to use a wider
range of them to exp us a wider range of emotions,
whereas with emojis and emoticons alike, women tend to keep
it positive. That's good, I mean, I guess you gotta
stay optimistic. Question mark question mark, question mark question mark. Um.

(31:16):
But it also seems like generally we've internalized this whole
idea of the emoticon being a female expression idea UM
and build an unconscious bias against guys using emoticons. I mean,
my my boyfriend I know doesn't really use them with
other dudes he's texting with. Yeah, I meant to ask

(31:37):
my fiance whether he and his guy friends engage in
much emoji back and forth. But from what I can tell,
they tend to just send each other like funny photos
a lot more often, which I feel like this like
even cuter, because that's a lot more work to have
to find find funny photos to send each other, more work.
But there was this. Zeusk Surveys is a dating site

(32:01):
for those of you who aren't familiar. The found that
guys with winky faces in their profiles attracted less attention,
whereas women with winky faces in their profiles attracted sixty
percent more interest. And this to me immediately, the first
thing I thought of was, like, it's because we're always
expected to smile. It's the whole hey honey, give me

(32:24):
a smile thing. Why aren't you smiling? Where guys are
expected to be more stoic? Maybe so, I mean, and
like emergies are considered kind of like a flirty or
emergies or emoticons are kind of considered a flirty thing
that more women are supposed to use, well guys and
straight guys. This now gets into more like heteronormative context

(32:45):
because linguists, come on, broaden your study pool please, um.
But research finds that guys use more emoticons if they're
talking in either like mixed gender groups or just talking
to a woman. And and did oh for younger people, Like,
younger guys are much likelier to use them in a
flirtatious way with girls insert winky face. Yeah no, boyfriend

(33:11):
dog way more likely to use them with me than
anybody else, which that's how it should be. Yeah, I mean,
and speaking of flirting and emojis, Caroline, I'll go ahead
and tell you the most embarrassing incident that I can remember.
I've probably done worse. Um, but a long time ago, now,

(33:31):
I was kind of sort of starting to see this
guy and I really liked him, and for some reason,
I thought it would be funny to send him a
text saying like, marry me in all caps and then
with the sunglasses smiley face, because I was like, the
sunglasses smiley face will definitely let him know that I'm joking.

(33:52):
Oh no, Yeah, he just didn't really respond to it,
did you? Guys? Keep dating. Well, he's not my fiance.
Oh yeah, I know, but like he didn't then ghost
did he? No? But he put me on ice. Yeah,
he definitely iced me. Um see that maybe if you
had tried Kristen c C. You probably didn't have enough

(34:14):
exclamation point, probably needed fifteen of the sunglasses smiley face.
Well and at that point to the like one eye
closed and the tongue out face did not exist yet,
you know the face that's like, I'm seriously joking, there's
no way you could possibly interpret this is something you
should consider to be a fact. Well, you should have
just then taken a picture of yourself making the the

(34:38):
winky tongue out face. I'm sure that would have won
him over, if only I could go back in time, Caroline. So,
but if we get back into this gendered speech, one
other thing that was really fascinating to me, And again
this goes back to a little more dated research because
it's focusing on emoticons, but linguists also suspect that women

(34:59):
might be likelier to use them in the same way
that we apologize in polite ways to kind of restore
the balance of the conversation. Linguists Debra Tannon calls it. Yeah, Oh,
absolutely absolutely. I mean beyond just making sure my boyfriend
knows that I'm like happy or even just neutral about

(35:21):
something and just not mad. Um, I will totally do
the same thing when I'm texting with friends, to be like, no,
you know, everything's fine. It is totally a qualifier and
a language softening thing. Yeah, especially if you if something
has been obviously been misinterpreted tone wise. When you respond
to that text, there's got to be a number of

(35:42):
like jokey emojis to to let the person know like no, no, no, no,
did not mean that when I closed tongue out face
seventeen of them. And the thing is that same body
of research did find that emoticons, just the basic no
frills emoticons or very helpful for people detecting the tone

(36:03):
and context of a text message or an instant message.
So imagine how more powerful our emojis are. I mean,
we have hundreds to choose from now, Yeah, and a
unicorn and a taco exactly, which are so fun And
I thought it was really fascinating how Another study found
that emoticons and emojis are especially popular among professional group

(36:26):
communications to build positive rapport. They lighten the mood in
that kind of way. Yeah. At my last job, uh,
when I was working with dude roommate and this other guy,
they frequently would employ the winky frownie face because, um,
you know when you end up on those like terribly
long corporate type of email threads with you know that

(36:49):
are very like office space style, and you're like, oh
my god, I'm so sick of these emails. You're leveraging
assets to tap into the zeitgeist kind of thing. So yeah,
breaking out of the silo and going deep. Um, dude
roommate and this other guy would would always send like
a smaller in group message with the winky frownie to
be like everything is terrible, Ah, we can't escape it. Ha.

(37:13):
And it built that rapport between you all, didn't it
you know or something. It definitely drove us to drink
at the bar across the street after work. Well and
speaking of of gender too, one thing that really jumped
out to me in a piece we read in Horizons magazine,
and that is Horizons h e Er was how Rights
Media education officer rose Ella Kabombo argued that putting down

(37:38):
emoticon and emoji used as some people have. I mean,
they're and especially with the excessive exclamation points. There's so
many columns usually written by guys I gotta say insisting
that we clean up our online speak. She says that
it's linguistic privilege in action, essentially, like an established group

(38:02):
trying to police how we lay folks are communicating. No, listen,
like I you know, literally the other half of my
job at how Stuff works is being an editor, and
so I am very strict in that role of making
sure like no, don't be so frivolous with your punctuation
use and with exclamation points, and you know, emogis and

(38:24):
emoticons obviously aren't a factor when you're editing an article.
But I am absolutely like a keeper of the of
the language when it comes to that role. But like,
chill out, like why are you getting upset with people
on whether it's text speaker, online speaker, whatever, Like why
are people getting so upset about the use of exclamation
points and smiley face because it's ruining the English language

(38:45):
this dern hired glyphs and cert thumbs down emoji. I
think maybe just the grumpy one, like the mean like
the devil face. Oh yeah, that's scary. It's kind of
like a beard. Yeah, gotta goatee, I think, But Caroline,
my favorite research finding out of all of this came

(39:07):
from a study called Gender Differences in Text Messaging, and
it referenced a study which found an age difference in
emoticon use, with female tweens and teens likelier to use
them as a way to soften their messages. As we
talked about, kind of that, you know, the polite i'm
sorry kind of thing, whereas older women our age did

(39:31):
not feel as emoticon compelled, but as a way to
soften their messages. So I thought that that was kind of,
uh A fascinating. Yeah, that's interesting. I'm definitely I guess
I fall in line with with the younger kids, but
they're still Yeah, I mean, I feel like there's something

(39:51):
a little bit different maybe with what they were looking
at with emoticons and professional emails, because I feel like
for women of our narration, we are emoji happy and
also we love sending each other gifts and fun things
like that. That I suspect, in my armchair opinion is
a way too like temper the just constant seven work

(40:18):
life imbalance that exists today. Yeah, I do. I do.
I am on like a constant group thread with with
some former co workers from that job, and we do
send little checkens via email a couple of times a week,
and it's just gifts. It's just a conversation and gifts
like how's your day going. Yeah, I mean, there's a
relatability factor too, and all about building that rapport that

(40:40):
I don't think that emoticons, just emoticons would have the
power to do in the same way that emojis and
of course gifts do. I'm a firm believer obviously in
the power of emojis and gifts. Oh god, yeah, oh god.
I had to go through and clear out so many
gifts from my phone, my like photo album on my
phone because I just I do tend to communicate with him.

(41:01):
It's a lot of head desk gifts, if you know
what I'm talking about. I really enjoyed though. How In
this gender Differences in text Messaging UH study, they found
that digital natives not surprisingly just responded that we use
emoticons and emojis just to save time. Hello, why are
we going to type all that stuff out? True? Because

(41:22):
you're you're certainly not going to have a phone conversation.
Oh gosh, Now, I mean, who does that? Not me?
I really don't have many phone conversations anymore. I don't either.
I was actually on the phone with my father last
night and my boyfriend beep through and he was calling me,
and I like, I was like, Dad, hang on, hold on,
some something's gonna be wrong. And I beeped over. He's like, hey,

(41:45):
how's it going. I'm like, oh my god, it's what's wrong?
What would you need to stop at the grocery store?
Something on fire? What's happening? And he's like, yes, just
calling to see what time you're going to be here, Like,
oh my god, someone called me. I wish that he
was calling to let you know that something at the
grocery store is on fire. Yeah. I probably am the
person to check on that. You're right. So, I think
what is so appealing about emoji is the fact that

(42:09):
there is this almost infinite range of potential meanings out there,
and that you can develop with your friends or your
significant other, even your parents kind of a secret language. Yeah.
This was something that New York Times tech writer and
all around rad lady Jenna Wortham has written about many times. Um,

(42:30):
but we read an essay of hers in Woman's Scene
where she describes her particular love of the Temporea shrimp emoji,
which I don't think i'd ever use that emoji before.
I never even really thought about it. But she loves
it because she has a few different and very specific
uses for it, Like she says, for some reason, it

(42:52):
reminds her of Mariah Carey, so she will use it
in those contexts. And also if she feels like someone's
being kind of rispy, she'll she'll send the Tempora shrimp
as well. I think the only time I've used the
temper A shrimp is when I'm texting someone how hungry
I am. And then I go through and I find
like every food item and do them each seventeen times,

(43:12):
and so you get like an essay length thing of
food related emojis from me. And yet you told me
earlier with the semicolon's you don't send essay text. How
the tune has changed again? I guess I was being
too literal, or maybe it's just again the power of emoji.
I mean, how can you stop at just one Tempora shramp? Yeah,
look at how hungry I am. Here are seven timpoor shrimps. Well,

(43:34):
and you know what, once that avocado emoji comes, Oh
my god, I'm so excited came over. Well, you've got
to get the you need to update before then, Caroline.
I mean, I I have an old phone, though I
don't know, maybe someone wants to write in and tell
me what to do. I'm just imagine you carry around
like a rotary telephone. Now I do full circle, I do.

(43:54):
I just have the Zack Morris cell phone, the brick
that I hold up to my head. But I want
to though, Caroline, I want to get your your thoughts
on this. Even when our emoji keyboards do include more
active empowered girl emojis, I mean, what will be our
use for them? I mean, do you think that it

(44:15):
will change in any way how girls see themselves, or
how women communicate to each other, or how we represent
ourselves in text speak at all, because I'll probably still
use my hair flip emoji all the time. You're helpful
woman at the service desk emogi. Yes, yes, I don't know.
I mean I think that that's total correlation causation question

(44:36):
because I think that, um, it's a lot more in
in how girls see themselves, and so you know, if
they do want to represent themselves to their friends in
emoji text speak as like a powerful lady. You know,
maybe they will then at some point have that firefighter

(44:58):
woman to represent themselves. Um, whereas right now they don't
have as many options. Well, I mean, even just for
the sports and active emojis, I could see you know,
girls in middle school and high school who are playing
sports who wouldn't mind using an emogi that reflects like
their interests and their athletics too. Yeah, it is weird

(45:19):
to sort of be left out of that. Well, and
it reinforces the guy as the default, as the standard. Yeah. Well,
and that goes back to so many sminthy conversations we've had.
We've talked about the importance of having a diverse set
of people in whatever type of company it is, in
whatever industry it is, um helping brainstorm and make decisions,

(45:43):
because if you just have dudes, then they're going to
be the most represented. Yeah, I mean, and that's why
I mentioned earlier that Unicode and I went and counted
on their website Unicode is mostly guys. So um, Now,
someone did have a theory that they might not have
included more women. Occupation emojis because they didn't want to

(46:06):
reflect gender stereotypes in that having like teachers and nurses.
So it's like they almost overcorrected. Possibly. Well okay, so
how about and then of course you would get into
questions of again who's the default male or female? Um?
But you know how you can click on something and
choose the skin tone for some of them, for some
of them, maybe you should be able to click on

(46:26):
them and choose if you want a male dancwer a
female dancer. Right, And that's I think what it will
ultimately be. And I mean and worth noting speaking of diversity,
the issue before that is that we had white as
the standard. Yea more for me, just yellow, just like
the Simpsons. I mean again, could that just go back

(46:47):
to representation in terms of who's creating this stuff? Possibly?
I mean it might again be just an oversight, you know,
of people not even really thinking about the need for it. Yeah, well,
I mean really they thought of tacos. So and it's
because we asked for tacos, Caroline asking you shall receive
you just like you gotta ask for that raise, you

(47:08):
gotta ask for your taco emoji. That's right. The important things, Yes,
and in this podcast has all been a metaphor on
negotiation at work. Surprise damn. But before we wrap up,
I do want to give a shout out to stuff
Mo've never told you, Bessie of the show over at
Maker's Amana McCall, who came up with feminist emojis of

(47:30):
Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Gloria's sign um Shonda rhyme Jamison. Yes, yes,
oh my god, the Gloria. The Gloria emogi. That's the
one that I want in my library so that I
can use that every day. There you go every day. Well, now, listeners,
we want to know your thoughts on emojis, and if

(47:52):
you want to just like tweet us your messages in emojis,
you can do that at Mom's podcast or if you
want to send us an old school with old school emoticons,
Mom's subbit house stuffwork dot com is where you can
do that. And we've got a couple of messages to
share with you right now. Okay, we have a couple

(48:14):
of let us here in response to our interview with
boss stup founder Emily Aries. So this one's from Scharard Uh.
He says, I just listen to the Bosstep episode, which
I thoroughly enjoyed. Love your work. I'm so sorry you're busy, Kristen.
I'm glad you and Caroline take the time to laugh
and joke around on air. It's infectious and a great
way to start my day. He goes on to say,

(48:35):
one thing that really resonated with me was the concept
of using the dollar as a method of political assertion.
I moved from the South to New England because I
did not want to support a state government that did
not have my quote unquote homosexual agenda at heart. The
winters are cold, but the equality of soul warming. I
have since gone back to school for a doctorate degree,
where the issues both you and Emily Aries point out

(48:57):
a rampant There are no dividing lines between my class, says,
the classes I teach, and anything resembling a home life.
All nighters are day rigor, and the semester sprint melts
into a thesis that feels like it goes on forever.
It is just as bad for my boyfriend, who is
a graduate student in the sciences, where he is at
the whim of the head of his lab. Principal investigators
that seems are not often trained to be teachers, making

(49:19):
it difficult for him to find a good mentor in
the field. My burnout didn't really come to a head
until I realized that both breakfast and lunch consisted of
a cup of coffee, and by dinner, I was positively
miserable and making a lot of simple mistakes. It wasn't
until my boyfriend pointed out, hey, coffee is not food
that I started to look at the way I was
treating myself. Every day now is an active fight to

(49:41):
treat my body with the respect it deserves in spite
of a never shrinking to do list. One more thing,
I would be remiss if I did not point out
that busy ness and business were once the same word,
not a coincidence. Ever since I realized the connection between
the two, I've pictured people in the business college across
campus speed walking around was decks of paper doing busyness work,

(50:02):
which is probably unfair but in some cases not inaccurate. Again,
love what you do, keep blazing trails. We listen from
the library and from the lab respectively, and sometimes now
while making this new thing called breakfast together. I love it.
Congratulations on breakfast, and thank you. I've got to let
her hear from Lauren, and she writes, I just wanted
to thank you for the boss step episode. Yesterday, I

(50:24):
had two separate conversations about the need to create boundaries
between work self and personal self so that I can
perform better in both places. As a social work grad student,
we talk a lot in class about the importance of
self care and preventing burnout, but it's not something I've
seen my fellow students or myself adopt. I've always been
the one to gain a lot of my self worth
from my work, which leads me to overworking, pulling the

(50:46):
I'm so busy card, neglecting personal relationships, and not doing
things I want to do, always being on the verge
of burnout. Oh, Lauren, I can so relate. I'm about
to graduate and start a new full time job, and
I really want to be intentional about taking care of
my self and being assertive so that I can be
a better employee but also a better friend and girlfriend. Anyway,
third Times a charm in this episode reinforced my desire

(51:08):
to make changes to better advocate for myself and all
of my relationships. To start, I finally use my grown
up coloring book of friends sent me months ago in
color to picture while listening to the episode. So thank
you so much Lauren for that letter. And you've got
to tune into our podcast on coloring books as well,
and with that listeners, we also want to hear from you,

(51:30):
mom stuff at house. Stuff works dot Com is our
email address and for links all of our social media
as well as all of our blogs, videos and podcasts
with our sources so you can learn so much more
about emojis. Head on over to stuff Mom Never Told
You dot com for moral this, and thousands of other topics.

(51:51):
Is it how stuff works dot com