I came to realize a few years ago how we often refer to 'skin tone' and imply that being a salmon-like pinkish colour. For example, foundation for a woman's skin is in the lighter colour range called 'skin tone' and in the darker colour range 'dark brown' - as if the latter isn't 'skin tone'.

Just a short introduction as there's so much more to it, to explain why when I saw 'skin toned' smileys I was initially happy: I was sure this was a good thing! Finally people with non-light skin tones could express themselves in their own skin colour! Which was needed right? The era where 'skin tone' was only 'light' was over... I thought. And indeed, I saw some of my colleagues sending thumbs up in a dark brown shade.

Then I started to think if I wanted to change my emoticon colour. The first time I thought I'd do this was when my black colleague send me the darkest available thumbs up and I felt hesitant using the white one - suddenly I felt super aware of my skin colour, and it didn't feel right to sort of emphasize I had that white skin colour against his dark one. (Especially since we've talked a lot about how his skin colour has played a huge (not positive) role in his life.)

I remember I hovered over the thumbs up I wanted to send back, trying to think which shade of light skin was 'mine', and in the end I felt so uncomfortable with picking those 'white' smileys I simply picked the standard, neutral, yellow one.

And I haven't changed that since.

Interesting topic to say the least. It's one of those things where you know 'they meant well' but the effect is the opposite. I can only imagine how happy certain groups of people are they can pick that white-skinned emoji...