Where does 馃崋 Eggplant emoji come from?

The听eggplant听emoji first debuted in 2010 and quickly became a symbol for the penis. According to 鈥淎mong the New 亚洲网紅露点s,鈥 a quarterly article in the journal听American Speech, the听eggplant听emoji was used on Twitter to mean 鈥減enis鈥 as early as 2011. In March of 2014, the video artist Jesse Hill 鈥渢ranslated鈥 Beyonc茅鈥檚 hit song 鈥淒runk in Love鈥 into emoji, using the听eggplant听to represent Jay Z鈥檚 penis.
Later that year, the emoji inspired a trend on Instagram and other social-media sites called “#EggplantFriday,” a hashtag that was linked to posts where men posted explicit images of their 鈥渆ggplants.鈥 But in 2015, Instagram actually blocked the听eggplant听emoji and references to it (e.g., “#eggplant”) from its search functionality. Instagram鈥檚 ban resulted in a campaign called “#FreetheEggplant,” modeled after the similar campaign “#FreetheNipple,” in 2012 for gender equality.
In 2016, the American Dialect Society named the听eggplant听emoji听the 鈥淢ost Notable Emoji鈥 of 2015 due to its widespread use as sexual innuendo. The听eggplant听emoji has also inspired two companies, Eggplant in the Mail and the Eggplant Mail, which let customers send actual eggplants in the mail as gag gifts. And, the company Emojibrator released an听eggplant听emoji vibrator in 2016 鈥 of course.
Examples of 馃崋 Eggplant emoji
Who uses 馃崋 Eggplant emoji?
The eggplant emoji is also called the aubergine emoji in the UK and Japan. While it can literally refer to the food item (eggplant parmesan, perhaps?), it鈥檚 most often used online to represent a penis. This is in large part due to other emoji representations of long foods associated with penises (like the banana or cucumber) looking less like 鈥 well 鈥 penises.
The eggplant emoji is frequently combined with other emoji. When paired with the mouth emoji, it means oral sex. When paired with the peach emoji, (a butt or female genitalia), it means anal or vaginal sex. When next to the sweat droplets emoji, it means ejaculation. And, that鈥檚 how you sext …
The eggplant emoji has become so associated with the penis that people even use the word eggplant as a stand in, or euphemism for, the word penis. It just sounds better.
Note
This is not meant to be a formal definition of 馃崋 Eggplant emoji like most terms we define on 亚洲网紅露点, but is rather an informal word summary that hopefully touches upon the key aspects of the meaning and usage of 馃崋 Eggplant emoji that will help our users expand their word mastery.