raised hand: light skin tone
Unicode: 270B 1F3FB
Description
A light skin tone modifier, also known as Type 1-2. It is typically represented by a light-skinned hand or other body part.
Group:
People & Body > hand-fingers-open
Status:
fully-qualified
Emotion:
This is a modifier and does not inherently convey an emotion itself. Its use is to specify a skin tone for other emotional or expressive emojis.
Backstory
Skin tone modifiers were introduced in Unicode 8.0 (2015) in response to widespread demand for greater diversity in emoji representations. The Fitzpatrick Scale, a dermatological classification of skin color, was used as the basis for these modifiers, with 1F3FB being the lightest.
Usage Examples
- To show a light-skinned person: '👋🏻 (waving hand, light skin tone)'
- To represent a light-skinned professional: '👩🏻💻 (woman technologist, light skin tone)'
- When expressing an action with a light-skinned hand: '👍🏻 (thumbs up, light skin tone)'
Cultural Differences
Western culture:
Widely used to represent Caucasian or light-skinned individuals in diverse emoji representations.
East Asian culture:
Used to represent lighter skin tones, but often less frequently than in Western contexts where racial diversity in emoji is more explicitly sought after.