There’s an emoji for 'feeling fat’ — and a petition to ban it

This combination made from images provided by Apple Inc. shows new emoji, the cute graphics that punctuate online writing and texts, that will be available with the next iOS update. Working with the Unicode Consortium, the nonprofit organization that sets the standards for the pictograms, Apple Inc. is incorporating more diverse emoji into the developer version of the latest update to its mobile operating system. The iPhone and iPad maker has not said when the update will be available for all users. (AP Photo/Apple Inc.) less This combination made from images provided by Apple Inc. shows new emoji, the cute graphics that punctuate online writing and texts, that will be available with the next iOS update. Working with the Unicode ... more Photo: Uncredited / Associated Press Photo: Uncredited / Associated Press Image 1 of / 3 Caption Close There’s an emoji for 'feeling fat’ — and a petition to ban it 1 / 3 Back to Gallery

In the time of text, emoji play an outsized role in conversation. When we can’t quite find the words to say, there is a cartoon arsenal of smiles, frowns, airplanes, jumping dolphins and eggplants to help us best express what we really mean.

Outrage was the particular emotion Catherine Weingarten wished to express when she launched a Change.org petition last week for Facebook to remove its “feeling fat” emoticon.

Round-faced and pink-cheeked with a double chin, the cartoon face labeled “feeling fat” seems as though it might be blushing at the pint of Ben & Jerry’s it just polished off.

“I think it was supposed to be funny, but seeing this status made me feel angry,” Weingarten wrote on the petition page. “When Facebook users set their status to 'feeling fat,’ they are making fun of people who consider themselves to be overweight, which can include many people with eating disorders. That is not OK.”

The significance that these miniature cartoons have gained in the Internet era-lexicon is only underscored by the fervor and occasional outrage with which the public debates their meaning.

Take, for example, the emoji symbol of two hands pressed together, which made the evening news last summer amid dispute over whether it represented a high-five or two hands clasped in prayer. (A less popular third suggestion was that it perhaps symbolized pleading.)

Or the prickly topic of race and emoji: Apple’s selection was long criticized for appearing to included mainly white faces, but when the company introduced a more racially diverse set of symbols last month, characters with what appeared to be yellow faces stoked a controversy of their own. (The Unicode Consortium, which tracks definitions of emoji, makes clear that yellow is supposed to represent a generic — nonhuman — default, rather than an Asian skin tone.)

Weingarten, a playwriting master of fine arts candidate at Ohio State University, writes in the petition that she once struggled with an eating disorder and alludes to the idea it could cause people to question their body image.

The petition, filed in partnership with body image organization Endangered Bodies, demands that Facebook remove “feeling fat.” As of writing, more than 12,000 people had signed it.

“It’s not surprising that Facebook came up with an emoji to capture what so many women were already saying in words,” said Renee Engeln, a researcher who studies body image at Northwestern University.

“When women publicly disparage their own bodies, it sends a message to others that this type of behavior is fair game — that women’s bodies exist to be evaluated publicly by other people, that women’s bodies are never, ever good enough,” Engeln said.

The petition does not request Facebook remove the “feeling stuffed” emoji, which is illustrated with the exact same rotund face. The company added the option to include an emotion in status updates in 2013. There are over a hundred emotions, including “drained,” “annoyed” and “fabulous.”

Facebook responded to a request for comment with a statement that did not comment specifically on the “feeling fat” icon.

Emoji, created in the late 1990s in Japan as a simplified form of communicating via text message, seem to strike a nerve simply because of what they are intended to convey.

“It’s a recurrence of a very old impulse,” the linguist Ben Zimmer told the New Republic last year. “The punctuation that we use to express emotion is rather limited. We’ve got the question mark and the exclamation point, which don’t get you very far if you want to express things like sarcasm or irony in written form.”

In a way, emoji can be read more personally than mere text.

“As the petition points out, this actually encourages an obsession with body size as well as shame around eating,” said Virgie Tovar, a San Francisco fat activist. “This seemingly funny or innocuous status update denaturalizes the fact that all people have body fat and furthers this idea that being obsessed with our size is normal, when in fact is is not.”

Kristen V. Brown is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: kbrown@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @kristenvbrown