Person with a beard

It means a beard, or the person who has one. In a bio or display name it usually says "this is me": the sender has a beard and likes it. In a chat it often names a specific bearded person ("ask 🧔, he has the keys") when nobody wants to type the name. Under a photo it points straight at the facial hair, and the words around it decide whether that is admiration, a joke about how long it has got, or plain recognition.

Beard-growing is its most common job. Someone who stopped shaving posts a selfie with 🧔 and a day count, or sends 🧔 to announce they are keeping it. A reply of 🧔🔥 or 🧔👌 is praise; 🧔😂 is friendly teasing. From a partner or a crush it can be flirty, but only because the conversation already is; the emoji itself carries no romance.

The one way it goes wrong is when it points at someone who did not raise the subject. Sent under a photo of a woman, or of a man self-conscious about patchy growth, it can read as mockery even if you meant it kindly.

Is 🧔 a man or a woman?

Officially neither: the plain character is simply a person with a beard. When you want to be specific, the family gives you a bearded man 🧔‍♂️ and a bearded woman 🧔‍♀️, each in five skin tones besides the default yellow. The woman form is used both literally and proudly, by women with facial hair and by people who enjoy the joke of a Santa-bearded lady.

It did not start that way. When it arrived in 2017 every design showed a man, and most people still read it as "bearded man". The man and woman forms were added in 2020, and some designers reworked the base to look less obviously male. Which face you see depends on your device, so if you need the gender to come across, send the explicit form.

Why can a beard emoji be a bigger deal than it looks?

For many people a beard is identity, not fashion. Sikh men keep their hair and beard uncut as an article of faith; many Muslim men wear a beard as a practice of the Prophet; Orthodox Jewish men, Amish husbands and Eastern Orthodox clergy keep beards by religious custom. In those communities 🧔 often appears simply as a self-portrait, and joking about the beard is joking about the faith. Beards also signal age and wisdom in the picture-language of emoji themselves: 🎅, 🧙 and 👴 all wear one.

The 2010s beard revival, with its barbershops, beard oil and the "lumberjack" look, is what put a dedicated beard emoji on the wish list in the first place, and it is still the mood behind most 🧔💈 and 🧔✂️ grooming posts.