The History of the Eggplant Emoji

November 7, 2024
ALEXANDER

The History of the Eggplant Emoji

We can admit it has been a little heavy this week with social media and news swirling around the 2024 Election. Let's turn that into the 2024 Erection for a bit of levity, shall we? Instead of some sprawling deep dive into Queer History, we are gonna lighten it up with some insight into one of our favorite gay emojis, the eggplant! No doubt it is one of your suggested favorites, perhaps followed by the peaches emoji, then followed by the squirting water emoji. So classy! We use it with our besties, we use it on Grindr, and we use it on social media, long live the eggplant!

Due to its shape and girth, the eggplant has been taken over by horny social media users to represent the male penis. Yes, it's a purple dick. The eggplant emoji was included in the first run of iPhones in 2007. At that time, the emoji keyboard was special only to Japanese markets. After US iPhone users got wind of the special keyboard, Apple was encouraged to roll it out to everyone. Fun fact: in Japanese culture, it is considered lucky to dream about an eggplant in the New Year. By 2011, everyone had access to emojis, which really hit their height during the mid-2010s. Seems like a lifetime ago! The first use of the eggplant emoji to represent the penis was in 2011 on Twitter. By 2015, popular magazines were writing about the evolution of the vegetable to pop culture penis. The eggplant became famous. The American Dialect Society voted it as "The Most Notable Emoji of 2015." In 2017, Netflix released a film called "The Package," which was originally titled The Eggplant Emjoi. By 2018, Dictionary.com defined the emoji as a euphemism for the male genitalia. Products from makeup to bath bombs were sold to honor the emoji.

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A post shared by Kyle Kaufman (@kyletakesonworld)

Back in 2015, Instagram allowed you to hashtag emojis. It didn't take long for Facebook and Instagram to ban the use of hashtagged eggplant (and peach) emojis. Also "eggplant" was removed as a searchable term. No fun! There was the brief movement and popular hashtag #freetheeggplant."

The emoji in question as related to sex remains most popular in the US and Canada. Good to know our neighbors up north know what's up in case we have to flee, we can use the eggplant as a universal code. In 2016, a study found that Nevada was the state most using the emoji. All that sexting in Vegas! And the purple emoji is not just for the gays, it is just as popular among straight people as it is among us.