I wasn’t surprised to find that there is currently only one Emoji that includes a visible medical face mask. However, I was sad to see that the expression on the faces of every version of this Emoji looked rather gloomy.
No doubt when this emoji was first introduced, face masks in Western society were primarily worn by professionals or those under medical care. However, we have since joined our brothers and sisters in places where medical face masks are worn by everyone and as some people have pointed out, this makes communicating emotions through facial expressions really tough.
Given this, I think we need more expressive face-mask Emojis. I think a suite of Emojis expressing alternate emotions through a face mask would allow us a small opportunity to show solidarity with one another as we brave this new world.
I think this is a great idea.