REPLAY: Reflections on creating the headscarf emoji, with Rayouf Alhumedhi

RA: 00:00

With one update, billions of people are suddenly able to see a headscarf wearing woman on their phone. And I'm thinking to communities where they probably have never seen a headscarf wearing woman in person. So if that is almost a soft launch to understanding and empathizing with other people with different identities, I think it makes so much sense. And that's kind of my push for emoji.

TS: 00:26

Hi everyone, it's Tosin here. Welcome back to Made For Us. This week, we're rewinding back to one of our most popular episodes from season one, my conversation with Rayouf Alhumedhi, creator of the headscarf emoji. Rayouf launched the hijab emoji project at the age of 16 to push for digital representation for Muslim women around the world. She was named one of Time Magazine's most influential teens and also featured on the Forbes 30 under 30 list.

his interview was recorded in: 2023

RA: 01:20

Before the Hijab Emoji Project came to mind in my Berlin bedroom, I honestly would describe myself as the most intense 14, 15 year old you'd ever meet. I just had opinions about everything. I was in the era of Tumblr when it was popular, reading blog posts, I curated my own Tumblr account. I was just very opinionated. I read a lot more than I do now, which is so unfortunate. But I just liked to share my opinions. Honestly, that's how I describe myself. I was obsessed with school. I really, really wanted to get into Stanford. That was my dream school for so long. So I was definitely academically oriented, which is why when I got in, I was absolutely over the moon.

TS: 02:00

Great. Thanks for that. You also lived in different parts of the world when you were younger, in the Middle East, in Europe. Can you tell us a bit about that?

RA: 02:12

So I was born in Saudi Arabia and I moved to Vienna at the age of seven where I attended an American school, an American international school. So I was very privileged to have an upbringing where having friends from four different continents was the norm. And I was in Vienna until the age of 12 and then moved to Berlin until the age of 17. And then after that, I moved back to Vienna until I graduated high school and went to California for university.

But that time period honestly was so formative to who I was. And I say this all the time, had I not been exposed to so many different cultures at a really young age at a rapid rate, I don't think I'd be a quarter of the person I am today, which is a person that cares a lot about global politics and global issues. Because I was forced to deal with that. I was forced to sit with friends and hear about their cultures and what they're going through and issues they have in their home country. Those conversations became a norm and you are also forced to like carry an empathy for others that you probably normally wouldn't because you are exposed to so many different backgrounds. And it's kind of makes me think about how I want my future children to live. I want them to have the humility of knowing that they're not the majority. Yes, I'm Saudi, but not everyone is Saudi. What does it mean to take a step back in your identity and listen to others? Then when it's your turn talking about it. So I feel like that's a big part of what I've learned in high school.

TS: 03:37

And also there must have been a time when, especially when you moved to Europe, when you realized that you were perceived differently, perhaps because of your religion, because you wore the headscarf. What do you remember?

RA: 03:47

Yeah, I think alongside the privilege of living in a place that you meet a lot of people, there's also the undeniable fact that you are different from the majority. And I think I realized very early on that I was perceived different by off-street society, just by the looks. I wrote an essay about this in my English class in university. I called it The Gaze. It's unspoken, you just feel it and you can tell when it's a curious stare versus a what is this brown family of six doing in this like Austrian, Viennese suburbs. Like you can just feel it. And it's something I felt all along. And I used to always tell my dad, I'm like, ba ba, why are they staring at us? Like, I don't understand. We're literally just walking. What's the issue? And he would turn it around and say, they're staring at us because we look cool. Like they're jealous. You know what I mean? He would turn it around to like, of course they'd stare. How could they not? So it was something I was confronted with very early on. And you grow out of it, expect it.

But when I came to the US, I honestly was so pleasantly surprised that I didn't get any of this gaze, this cold stare. I felt so normal and I completely lost a lot of consciousness of my identity and it's surprising. I didn't think I'd have this in the US, but at least in California, I don't wanna generalize. In California, in the Bay Area, I think it's definitely a multicultural hub. But yeah, I think there's a lot of room to grow in terms of how a lot of immigrants are treated in Berlin and in Vienna. You know, in saying that, I definitely understand that living there was so important to my formative years.

TA: 05:22

Did that time coincide with when you started wearing the headscarf? Like, how old were you when that happened?

RA: 05:27

Yeah, that's a good point. I completely forgot that I started wearing the head scarf at around 13. I was so nervous to wear it. It's because you build a self perception of yourself even at 13. Like now I look back and I'm like, oh, I was so young, but I remember feeling so mature and so wise, even though I probably wasn't. And it was like, oh shoot, the self perception of myself is changing a little bit. And it's something I did want to wear the head scarf, but it's a reality that I think not a lot of people talk about is course you want to wear, but it doesn't come without struggle. And putting it on was such a adjustment in terms of self-perceptions. I remember standing outside of my year eight classroom and just like really struggling to go in. Cause like, if my friends don't like me? What if they don't think I'm cool? And I did it. I don't honestly remember how the general, cause I was in Berlin at the time, the general Berlin population felt. Berlin has a strong Turkish community and a strong like hijabi community. I don't think I felt completely off, but that's when I began being conscious of the fact that the first thing people will perceive of me is that I wear the headscarf and that I'm Muslim.

And that's a component I need to deeply understand in how I interact with others almost, because to myself, I'm like, I'm just talking to this person at the grocery store. There may be some understandings or misperceptions they have of me off the bat before I begin. And I think a trap I fell into early on when I started wearing it is trying to set those misperceptions right, which is a burden that no one should be responsible in dealing with, especially people of color, which I feel like are often trying to prove that, hey, I'm not this, I am not that. I remember going through efforts to show like, I can do this, I can do sports, even though I probably wouldn't want to do the sports if it was really up to me.

TS: 07:12

I wonder how all this, this experience sort of shaped how you thought about emoji.

RA: 07:17

So growing up in a non-Muslim country definitely influenced my journey to creating headscarf emoji. It primarily was rooted in the fact that yes, there is this misperception people have of us. I wanted a way to show like an emoji as surely as it may be. It also holds a lot of value in reaching a wide array of people really quickly. And I thought that was the most, almost beautiful, poetic way of a medium for the headscarf because a lot of the rhetoric, it's an archaic symbol. It doesn't represent the future. It doesn't represent Europe, da da da. And I was like, okay, well, is probably one of the most technologically symbolic item of our times, artifact of our times. And it's two-year-olds learn to speak emoji before they do words or read or write words. So I landed on the world of emoji in that way. I wanted a symbol of representation, to be honest, even if it was so small because every time I see myself or somebody that looks like me on the screen, every single time I get goosebumps. It's so weird. I remember going down my university gym and seeing a huge banner of somebody in this swimming pool and they were wearing a headscarf. I was like, wow, I was just so stunned that we've reached a point where it's like a university wouldn't think to represent it.

ting the hijab emoji began in: 2016

TS: 08:59

And obviously you're a digital native. I can you even remember life without emoji?

RA: 09:03

I can't, I don't know if it's a good thing though. Maybe it would have been cool to remember times when we had to express our emotions with words instead of little icons, but that is the reality we live in.

TS: 09:15

So I want to talk about how it all began, the Hijab Emoji Project, and what was it that planted the seeds for actually going through all that trouble of submitting a proposal? Yeah, tell me about that.

RA: 09:28

The first time the idea of a hijab emoji came to mind was when I was 15, 16. I sent an email to Apple customer support and I was like, for some reason, Apple is the person that will deal with this. They will get the emoji to me. I sent a long email proving that something like this would be incredibly useful. I mentioned that it's not just Muslim woman who wear the headscarf that would benefit. It's an array of head scarf wearing women from Jewish woman to Christian woman. So I made my case, obviously got nowhere, but that's the official beginning of the seed being planted. And I put that on pause and then I made a group chat with my friends and we all had emojis of ourselves in the name. My brunette slash blonde haired friend put an emoji of hers. My friend with black hair found one for her. I didn’t at the time, so I used a turbaned guy and a girl with black hair with arrows in between to represent myself. And that's kind of how the conversation began with my friends that was like, why isn't there a headscarf emoji? And that's when I began thinking back to my proposal a few months back and started rethinking it.

I was on Snapchat a few days after, honestly, it was a stream of right things, right time, back to back, because I opened my phone on Snapchat and I see Mashable has a cover story that says, you want to create their emoji? This is how. And it proved to me that there was a formal process of creating an emoji that I was previously unaware of through the Unicode Consortium, which is the organization that manages all the technicalities within the characters in our keyboards. So there's no character, there's no emoji that exists on your phone today without the approval of the Unicode Consortium. It's an absolutely crazy thing to think about back then and even now.

RA: 11:15

So I send a proposal to them seven pages long. I send it off, cross my fingers and receive a response within three days from the Unicode Emoji Subcommittee and specifically from Jennifer Eight Lee. And soon she becomes a mentor for so many years until now. And she lets me know that, thanks for doing this. We actually had something in mind, but no one submitted a proposal. You got something going on, but let's make it more robust. And I was like, okay, you want to make it robust? Let's do it. I'm here for it. I worked with her to make it better. She looped in Alexis Ohanian, the co-founder of Reddit, to really push the proposal forward into the front lines of media outlets to kind of highlight the importance of representation and just really campaigning to make the emoji come to life. And then I submitted it. We did a few months and it was approved. And then a year later, it was actually on our phones in 2017. And that was a surreal moment to click it and see it.

TS: 12:11

Tell me about that timeframe. Is that fast for emoji to get approved or is that slow?

RA: 12:16

to me honestly was surprising that it took that long. And even initially when they said, it's been approved, it was like, so I'll update my phone and I'll see it. I was unaware, but the time of a year I think is used to align between different vendors within the Unicode consortium. And by vendors, I mean the companies that pay to have voting power in terms of the emoji and a bunch of other characters that are on the phone. So this includes Apple, Google, and a bunch of other companies like Twitter. It's so important for them because that's why a lot of people end up updating their phones. They say like, okay, I'm not going to update my phone if it's going to be fixing bugs here and there. It's not enough reason, but if I'm getting this really cool new emoji, then I might, which is why there's an investment in emojis from these companies.

TS: 12:59

So I wanted to go back to the proposal. You wrote it up and then you had to make it more robust. Like you said, what was your main argument?

RA: 13:07

The proposal tried to prove an array of different things and there's actually guidelines on the Unicode website. One is trying to prove that it wouldn't be transient, that it would not just be a trend thing. Once it's released, people will continue to use it. And the way I proved that was bringing in screenshots from people on Twitter who said, I want an emoji for across several years. So it's like, people have been wanting this through several years. And I had to prove that it would be popular in general.

And I did that by doing a Google trends analysis, comparing it to the turban emoji and seeing like, the heads hijab, the term as way more searches than turban over X amount of years, which mean it will likely be more popular. I showed that there's like an untapped market in social media in terms of headscarf wearing bloggers who have hundreds and thousands of followers who use a headscarf as a way to brand and image themselves. There's almost a validation to the hypothesis that representation is important because a bunch of women are following these bloggers because they want to see somebody that looks like them. So it was a lot of proving that, this will be successful. It won't just be a trend. It will continue to be popular. It's important for the culture. We need it to happen. And I actually went in person after I submitted their proposal to pitch my case to the IBM offices where Unicode hosts their meetings. And I told my dad this, that, hey, I'm flying out to San Jose, I have business to do and he didn't believe it. He was like, this is a scam. Like, are you sure? Because I hadn't told them about my submission. They knew nothing about it, but we did it and I fled my case. think that definitely offered a little push to the emoji being approved. And yeah, so it was a process of sending in a proposal, going in person and doing campaigning for the period before it was approved.

TS: 14:53

And have to remember that you were 16 at this time. This is quite a big deal. You're flying to the IBM headquarters. Did you have nerves? Did you have any sense that this might not work out? This might not go the way you wanted.

RA: 15:05

I was very nervous. Just the idea of going from my high school level type of presentations to one with Twitter and Apple and Microsoft engineers was terrifying. But I've always said to myself, if there's one thing I know with absolute certainty, it's everything about the head scarf. It's like something that I might be a subject matter expert at because I wear it every day. I grew up with it. I have friends who wear it, so that's kind of the confidence I came with that I was like, in this room, I am the subject matter expert and I will know the most about this. So that's definitely what calmed me down.

And yeah, it's crazy to think that I was 16 now as somebody that's 22 because there's beautiful confidence when you're young and it's this naivety that...I don't think I was naive. I honestly actually think it was the right time for me to do this. I had so much energy because again, I was like, I'm telling my story. Yes, I want people to hear my story. I want them to reshift the narrative about the headscarf. Like, please let me speak. Give me the space to speak. And that's the energy I came in with. And I honestly, I still have every time I speak about it. I get so passionate that I have an opportunity and space to change the narrative just a little about the headscarf and representation.

TS: 16:20

I'd love to talk a little bit about changing the narrative because you did have a mixture of responses and reactions to your campaign from all across the spectrum. Can you talk about the ones that particularly stood out for you?

RA: 16:33

I think the most fulfilling and most heartwarming reactions were the ones I received from unexpected places. I got a message from a Michigan school elementary teacher that said, hey, Ryu, we're teaching your story in my fifth grade class. We would love if you could share a little bit about it. And it absolutely struck me as something so beautiful for someone like myself to be based in Berlin, to be from Saudi Arabia, to have my story being told all the way in Michigan. I've never been to Michigan. And the idea of it being taught as something, as a lesson almost, and something so formative, that made me so, so happy. And of course, I've gotten so many messages from young women in Tunisia and India and Saudi Arabia and Egypt thanking me for this. And I'm always like, don't thank me. This is an absolutely collective effort because the need for representation is something that we all really want.

And that was one bucket of the response and the foil to that was the intense negative response I also received, which wasn't completely unexpected because from the first interview I've done, I knew that there was a sensationalist aspect to the headline of 15 year old Saudi Muslim girl and head scarf. There was just something in that that was ripe for me to attention. And in retrospect, I didn't realize how much was expected of me to educate more than I was comfortable doing, which I think goes back to what I previously said. We are often put as people of color in positions of education that we may not be best suited for either because we don't want to, which is a valid response, or even educationally. I'd be getting questions about Sharia law and the politics and this and that. And at 16, I was like, yes, let me answer it. Let me answer.

But again, in retrospect, I'm like, maybe they should have brought in an expert, not a 16 year old girl who wanted an emoji to represent herself. So I think there's an unfair amount of expectation from me at that age. And the negative response included a hate letter being sent to my home, which was shocking to me. It read something along the lines of, you're not doing anything to the world. Be grateful you're here and we didn't kick you back to Yemen. Which I was like, okay, yeah, I'm not from Yemen, but okay.

RA: 18:40

And I think it's an element, know, this response is an element of not interacting with people that wear the headscarf or not asking the right questions or falling to a lot of the media headlines about the hijab being something oppressive. Another one was a Austrian politician posted a screenshot of my nomination as Time's most influential teen and the head scarf emoji posted on his Facebook and in German wrote in Zinn, which is insanity. And he was a member of the right-winged group, FPO in Austria. And a lot of his supporters commented double downing on the insanity of it all.

I didn't think I'd ever be a political scapegoat, but that's kind of what it ended up being. it was proving a need for a head scarf emoji even more. And in saying that, I don't want to dissuade a lot of the positivity that came and comes with it, even now. So I would say overall it's a net positive, but the distaste from a lot of people is something incredibly interesting, honestly, to even study anthropologically. Like that's what I'm thinking about. I was like, wow, what a response to something so small.

TS: 19:50

Having a letter sent to your home, that's pretty intense. What was that like for you and your family? Like when you received that letter?

RA: 19:57

I wasn't completely sad. I definitely wouldn't say that that's the adjective I'd use to describe it. It was confusion. It was shock. And I honestly almost fed into like the line of why are you doing this? If it's causing this much outrage, is this the right way to go about this? Pushing for representation. Maybe emojis aren't as the right medium. And I was like, just for a few seconds, I entered that like questioning headspace. I quickly got back out of it because I realized this is absolutely nonsense, what is being said to me, how it's being said. I also like thought back to a mentor who said that if you aren't making some people upset, then you aren't causing change.

And it's something I recently spoke at my graduation for Stanford for product design. And I said it from my personal experience that if you want to push boundaries, you have to question the way things are being done, which will make the people who are used to the way these things are done confused and upset like, hey, this is my norm. Why are you shifting it? I think it comes with almost any technology being introduced. It will make some people upset. And it's a reality of, okay, that means things are moving though. Cause if everyone's happy and everyone's content with their reality and no one is trying to shift the narrative, then nothing is changing.

TS: 21:13

So there might be some people who don't get why emoji are such a big deal. These are just tiny digital images. Surely it's real world representation that matters. What would you say to those people?

RA: 21:26

We live in a world where the virtual experiences and parasocial relationships are taking a strong hold into Gen Z, Gen Alpha and the younger generation. And that's a reality we can't dismiss. And that's why you see a lot of interest in the metaverse, in virtual reality. There are young children who are building relationships with YouTubers before they are with real life friends. There's a lot of negatives and positives to that. But that shows to me and validates that there is a power in mass dissemination that comes with technology and Emoji is an example of that.

With one update, billions of people are suddenly able to see a headscarf wearing woman on their phone. And I'm thinking to communities where they probably have never seen a headscarf wearing woman in person. So if that is almost a soft launch to understanding and empathizing with other people with different identities, I think it makes so much sense. It's non-invasive. It reaches a lot of people super quickly. And that's my push for emoji. It's the language of the new generation. It's, you see it being employed in marketing campaigns because it's something that you don't have to speak, say it, a picture can speak a thousand words. And that's why I'm a fan of emoji as a medium. It's so simple and playful. And that's a language not often associated with a headscarf.

TS: 22:47

I wanted to give some time to talk about your life since the project because so much has happened since then. And I'm curious to know how the project impacted your life choices.

RA: 23:00

The Hijab Emoji Project influenced a lot of my understanding about how the world operates. And I know that's a big sentence, but I mean, down to the level of being involved in a campaign with Always Arabia, where we were spreading messages of empowerment for Saudi women who are about to enter the workforce due to some labor changes. And then it also taught me of what is the impact of doing something so small on others? How do you formulate your ideas in a way that is both graceful, true to yourself, and also clear. It taught me that I'm definitely interested in the world of social impact and entrepreneurship. And I've spent the last four years understanding how I can exactly curate that. I came to Stanford initially as economics major because I really wanted to step into public policy, play a role in Saudi Arabia in pushing change. Two years in, I changed my major to product design because unknowingly I think that was the undiscovered passion I've had for so long. The idea of creating a product, an image that changes lives.

And that's really what I'm hoping to do in the future is finding a way to meld design with impact and venture. So I'm in the far future interested also in beginning a venture investing company where I support young female entrepreneurs from the Middle East. I would absolutely love to do that. I think it made clear that the thoughtfulness you provide in inclusive design is super important. So the first thing I remember thinking about when I submitted the headscarf emojis, it has to be available in all colors. Like there's no question about that. We have to use the Fitzpatrick modifier, which is the term used to the different skin tones within this emoji. So I think that's definitely what it established my interest in design and impact.

TS: 24:42

So I'm curious because you did a project with Netflix about Gen Z and their consumer behavior. So you know a lot about this group of consumers. From your point of view, to what extent are they influencing companies to think about inclusivity?

RA: 24:55

Gen Z really stands out as the activist generation and I definitely feel like I'm a big part of it. We are a generation that will call something out quickly. Even though we're young, I think the oldest Gen Z is probably 24, 25. The youngest is around 13. We've made dents in the generation and as a result of having a high expectation of companies being thoughtful about identity, I do also think we are pushing for inclusive design in a lot of areas. You see it in makeup, forcing and urging companies to offer a wide skincare line. Yesterday, most recently, I saw people on TikTok talking about how even lip liners need to have a darker shade. That was something I wasn't aware of. was like, yeah, of course foundations and concealers need to be, offer a wide array of skin tones, even to the darkest and lightest shade. But something like lip liners, when you want something that matches your skin tone and the lightest you have is a light brown like my skin tone, that's not inclusive.

RA: 25:48

So it's really shifting the expectation of what needs to be done and almost say, I know BS rule. You have the funds, you have the research, especially for companies that are exploiting a lot of black and brown culture to push their marketing and their narrative. The least we can expect is that you employ our voices and actually be thoughtful about them. So I absolutely love the culture we've generated. It's something though that I do think has pitfalls. I'm a little bit on the fence when it comes to the individual level, the act of calling out, but it's definitely been pushing inclusive design to the forefront, which I appreciate as a designer because it means that I enter the boardroom and when I enter the workforce, that's what people will be caring about and I don't have to push for it anymore.

TS: 26:28

Okay, so what is next for you?

RA: 26:30

The biggest thing I have to figure out in the next few years is how to leave an impactful mark on the world, which is not an easy feat. And I think the only way I could guarantee I do that is by staying true to my values and creating a series of non-negotiables. What are we use non-negotiables if I do end up working for a company? What do they need to embody? What is my non-negotiable if I do decide to work for myself and build a platform? I'm super interested in the idea of building a directory or a LinkedIn for Arab creatives. That's a lot more focused on culture and tapping into a lot of underground graphic designers within the Arab world, because I do think there's an under investment in creativity within the region. think maybe it's really only Dubai that stands out, but thing about really cool DJs in Sudan or really cool artists in Egypt. That is something I really want to spend some time working on and kind of building a community of creatives within the MENA region. That will be probably my baby for the next few months if I really push through with it and what I have in mind right now.

TS: 27:35

And how can people follow your work?

RA: 27:37

Yes, I post a lot about design and representation and inclusivity on my Instagram. It's just Rayouf Alhomadi. I would love to hear more voices, would love any feedback on any work I do and just reach out and say hi. If I'm in your city, I probably would want to grab coffee.

TS: 27:55

That was Rayouf Alhumedhi, founder of the Hijab Emoji Project. You can find links to follow her work in the show notes. If you liked this episode, you should also check out my interview with Keith Broney, the editor-in-chief of Emojipedia. And please leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen. I'm Tosin Sulaiman. Thank you for tuning in to Made For Us.

RA: 28:15

Okay, let's start off with song recommendation. For song recommendation, I've been loving Take It Easy, My Brother Charles by Jorge Ben Jor. He's a bossa nova artist from Brazil. It's so good. If you just imagining a Sunday by a lake or a body of water, that's what you need to put on. For a book recommendation, I just started Everything I Know About Love by Dolly, I think her last name is Alderton. I think overall I really like anything James Baldwin. I read Giovanni's Room recently, which was pretty good. Yes, I think those are my recommendations. Giovanni's Room, James Baldwin, everything about love, Dolly Alderton.