Eggplant emoji

TheEggplant emoji(🍆), also known in English, French and its Unicode name asAubergine, is anemojifeaturing a purpleeggplant.  Social media users have noted the emoji'sphallicappearance and often use it as aeuphemisticor suggestive icon duringsextingconversations in order to represent apenis. It is frequently paired and often contrasted with thepeach emoji(🍑), which is often used when representing thebuttocks(orvulva).
Theeggplantemoji was originally included in proprietary emoji sets fromSoftBank Mobileandau by KDDI.WhenApplereleased thefirst iPhonein 2007, there was an emoji keyboard intended for Japanese users only,which encoded them using SoftBank'sPrivate Use Areascheme.However, after iPhone users in the United States discovered that downloading Japaneseappsallowed access to the keyboard, pressure grew to expand the availability of the emoji keyboard beyond Japan.
As part of a set of characters sourced from SoftBank, au by KDDI, andNTT Docomoemoji sets, the eggplant emoji was approved as part ofUnicode6.0 in 2010 under the name "Aubergine".In 2011, Apple made the emoji keyboard a standardiOSfeature worldwide.Global popularity of emojis then surged in the early- to mid-2010s.The eggplant emoji has been included in the Unicode Technical Standard for emoji (UTS #51) since its first edition (Emoji 1.0) in 2015.
The "aubergine" or "eggplant" emoji is commonly used to represent a penis insextingconversations.This usage has been noted to be common, particularly inthe United States,as well as in Canada.In line with the eggplant emoji's common usage in sexual contexts,Emojipedianoted that the emoji is popularly paired with thepeach emoji(🍑), which is often used to represent buttocksor female genitalia.
The emoji was used as a reference to penis onTwitteras early as 2011.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."Slatewriter Amanda Hess stated that "the eggplant has risen to become America's dominant phallic fruit."Writing forCosmopolitan, 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."
In 2018,Dictionary.combecame the first major reference to add explanations for emojis,although these explanations are only included on the editorial section of the website.
The eggplant emoji has been referenced by popular culture numerous times. In 2017, Netflix won a bidding war to distribute a film titledThe Eggplant Emoji.The film was ultimately renamedThe Package. In 2019, the cosmetics retailerLushsoldbath bombsresembling the eggplant emoji for Valentine's Day.The company expanded their eggplant and peach emoji-themed product line the following year.
As early as 2013, online media outlets have commented on the eggplant emoji's resemblance to a penis, withComplexlisting it as one of "10 emojis to send while sexting."
In April 2015,Instagramreleased a feature allowing users to hashtag emojis.Shortly after, the platform banned the hashtag "🍆", as well as any references to "eggplant" from its search function.Later in 2019,Facebookand Instagram both banned using the eggplant or peach emojis alongside "sexual statements about being horny."
In 2016, the eggplant emoji's widespread usage as sexual innuendo led theAmerican Dialect Societyto vote it as the "Most Notable Emoji" of 2015.