In a bid to promote inclusivity and challenge stereotypes, 10-year-old Teddy from Peppard, Oxfordshire, has initiated a campaign urging Apple to redesign its “nerd face” emoji.
Teddy, a proud glasses-wearer, finds the current emoji “offensive and insulting” due to its portrayal of prominent front teeth.
Teddy revealed the motivation behind the campaign to the BBC, saying, “we want to change this – Apple is making it absolutely horrible for people wearing glasses”.
His redesigned emoji, which he affectionately calls the “genius emoji”, features thin lenses, thin frames, and a small smiley face, steering away from what he describes as “horrible rabbit teeth”.
Teddy’s effort gained momentum after he shared his concerns with his teacher, Lisa, who helped him launch a petition both within the school and online.
The young advocate hopes that Apple will adopt his redesigned emoji, emphasising the importance of accurate representation and challenging stereotypes associated with glasses wearers.
Reflecting on his campaign, Teddy said: “If Apple took my ideas on board, it would feel amazing, and I’d be so excited.”
Fortunately for Teddy, Apple has updated and redesigned emojis in the past.
During the Covid pandemic, Apple unveiled a small change to its syringe emoji that removed the drops of blood to be less graphic amid the vaccine rollout.
Revealed in the Apple iOS 14.5 beta, the update also added the ability for both women and men to have beards.
And those who updated their iPhone in 2016 would recall Apple changing its realistic-looking gun or pistol emoji in iOS 9.3 to a bright green toy water gun in the iOS 10 beta.
According to Emojipedia, there’s never been a more poorly received emoji change in the history of its operation.
“The thing is, emojis already look different on different platforms and it does cause confusion,” Jeremy Burge, editor of Emojipedia, told the BBC.
“When we’re dealing with guns and toys as a comparison, that’s a whole new level of problems that we have there.”