The non-profit organization Plan International writes in a study about menstruation that there is still a huge taboo surrounding it and that most women aren’t comfortable talking about the subject. Half of the women between 18-34 in the study feel that it would be easier to talk to their partner about menstruation if there was an emoji for it.

They therefore launch a competition in May where they ask people to vote on five different period emoji designs, and between the UK and Australia over 54,600 people voted in total. Over 18,700 voted for the pants emoji to be added to keyboards worldwide. It was submitted as a proposal to the Unicode Consortium, asking them to add it as an emoji standard in 2018.