This campaign wants to change the stigma around periods with emojis

If you're trying to convey your avocado obsession, or if you just saw a man in a business suit levitating, chances are you can express that quickly and simply using the glorious catalogue of emojis.

However, despite around 50% of the world's population experiencing monthly menstruation during their lifetimes, there isn't a single emoji connected to a woman's period.

Girls rights group, Plan International, has launched a social media campaign to right this wrong.

The charity want to end the stigma surrounding menstruation, and it’s using emojis to do it.

The charity launched the campaign on Sunday, with a simple goal: add an official ‘period emoji’ to the global emoji family.

Susanne Legena, deputy CEO for Plan International in Australia explained that the universal language of emojis meant they were an ideal choice when people want to talk about periods.

Even though at least 800 million women and girls between the ages of 15 and 49 are menstruating right now, there isn’t a single emoji to represent periods. Isn’t it ridiculous that there’s a long nose goblin emoji and a floppy disc emoji, but no period emoji?

To get the campaign off to a flying start, the charity has created five designs and is asking people to vote for their favourite.

People can choose between a used sanitary towel, a diagram of a uterus, period pants, a calendar representing ‘that time of the month’ or blood droplets.

The winning design will be sent to the Unicode Consortium, the organisation that decides on emoji inclusion across devices (which sounds like an amazing job).

Find out more at their website here.

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