YouTuber Grace makes appeal for ginger icons

Grace in her YouTube appeal to computer giant Apple.

By Kieran O’Mahony

A UCC student from Crossbarry has been fighting the cause for redheads everywhere with her call for Apple to include ginger ‘emojis’ in their latest iOS 8.3 Update.

‘Emojis’ are the little smiley – and other – faces and icons that are used to express emotions on texts.

Grace O’Leary, who has just finished her final exams, made the tongue-in-cheek video on her YouTube channel urging the computer giant to include ginger emojis in their next update.

‘I had noticed that you can now choose the colour of both hair and skin on the update as well as every sexual and racial orientation, but the one they omitted was ginger. I thought it would be fun to make a video asking Apple not to forget us redheads and didn’t realise it would get so much attention,’ said Grace speaking to The Southern Star.

‘There was massive media interest about the video and it has got over 2,000 views on my channel which is amazing. I was genuinely surprised that it got picked up. It’s actually the first video that has got picked up since I changed the style of videos that I was making.’

Grace’s video channel started last year when she was in Mexico but since then she has begun to make witty videos that subscribers are picking up on.

‘I just film myself using a HD camera and I edit the videos myself and upload every week. There is actually a petition on Change.Org by a fellow redhead in England that is getting serious momentum with nearly 10,000 signatures and who knows the powers that be may include gingers in the next Apple update.’

In the meantime Grace will continue to upload her videos on her ‘This is Grace’ channel on YouTube and her recent posts include ‘10 Things not to do in the Library’ and her most recent ‘Get Motivated’ video.

To view Grace’s ‘No Ginger Emoji’ video, see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDpP5J7KHps