Facebook has been making a few updates, nothing new there. But this time the Friend Icon we’ve become familiar with has had a specific gender equal based update. Instead of having the woman shorter behind the man now they have become the same size, and she’s in front. NOBODY puts faceless icon woman behind faceless icon man! Did you notice the update?
“As a woman, educated at a women’s college, it was hard not to read into the symbolism of the current icon; the woman was quite literally in the shadow of the man, she was not in a position to lean in,” said Facebook design manager Caitlin Winner. “My first idea was to draw a double silhouette, two people of equal sizes without a hard line indicating who was in front. Dozens of iterations later, I abandoned this approach after failing to make an icon that didn’t look like a two headed mythical beast. I placed the lady, slightly smaller, in front of the man.”
