Vagina emojis are here and they're about to take your sexting game to a whole new level.
On Oct. 9, Flirtmoji, a sex-positive startup company, released a set of five diverse, body-positive (and absolutely adorable) vagina emojis. The self-proclaimed "group of hornballs" launched Flirtmoji last year to create a visual language of almost 200 emojis "designed to empower people of all sexualities to communicate their desires, concerns and flirtations."
Designed by Flirtmoji artists Jeremy Yingling and Katy McCarthy, each vagina has a unique shape, size, color and haircut -- just like real-life vaginas.
"We’re trying to empower people to better communicate their needs and wants in sex," Yingling told The Huffington Post. "Visual language (like emojis) is powerful stuff. With Flirtmoji, we worked hard to create the visual language that sex deserves: playful, sex-positive, body-centric, entirely inclusive art."
In the next few months, Flirtmoji plans to release even more vagina emojis (featured below).
Unfortunately, Flirtmoji is not available as an app in Google Play Store or Apple App Store because the stores rejected the app. As Flirtmoji speculates on its website, the stores "don't allow (see: censor) all sexually explicit content."
Yingling explained why this censorship of sex and body parts is problematic. "Now we’re equipped with phones and the potentiality to continue to embrace and grow our sexuality, but certain tech powerhouses have embraced rigid censorship parameters," he told HuffPost. "Keeping open lines of sex-positive communication is a crucial part of having a healthy sex life. And a world of people having consensual, healthy sex is a good place to be."
In addition to body part emojis, Flirtmoji also creates other sex emojis as a playful way to talk about sex, sexuality and consent in a playful and healthy way.
In order to use these emojis in text message conversations, users need to sign up by email which allows them access to the Flirtmoji website filled with all their awesome sexmojis. Once users gain access to the website, they can then copy and paste the emojis into texts from Flirtmoji's website.
In the upcoming months, Flirtmoji will release even more body part emojis in their "BODIES" collection, including penises, vulvas and breasts. "We’ve been hard at work drawing body parts representational of all the things we find sexy in the human form." Yingling said. "That means diverse skin tones, tangles of hair, and details like wrinkles, veins, freckles, piercings, and curves that make our ‘junk’ beautiful."
Scroll below to see a few of our favorite sexmojis from Flirtmoji.
Head over to Flirtmoji's Instagram, Twitter and/or Facebook accounts to see more playfully naughty emojis.
Editor's Note: These emojis are branded as "vagina emojis" by Flirtmoji. While they may look more like vulvas anatomically, Flirtmoji calls them vaginas as a general term. Vulva emojis will be available on Flirtmoji in the upcoming months.
UPDATE: The Verge has reported that at least one of Flirtmoji's vagina emojis was plagiarized from designer and musician Erin Tobey. Tobey's illustrations were featured in a 2013 Kickstarter campaign.
Tobey told The Verge that Flirtmoji 's designs "are pretty literally 'quoted' from my work."
"I see the resemblance, down to some of the little details in the curves," Yingling wrote in an email to Tobey that he shared with The Verge. "I'm obviously absolutely uncomfortable with those similarities and understand it looks like malicious theft of art."
Yingling later added in his email to Tobey: "They look plagiarized. I suppose by some definition they are. I feel terrible and embarrassed. I'm sorry."
Head to The Verge for more about this recent development.
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