Face With Head-Bandage 🤕

A face adorned with a white or beige bandage wrapped around the head, often covering one or both eyes, sometimes the entire head. The expression behind the bandage looks pained, worried, or dazed. It's an instantly recognizable visual of injury and hurt.

The primary use is literal—communicating that you've been injured, gotten hurt, or are recovering from an accident or procedure. Someone might send it after a fall, surgery, or sports injury, often with tongue-in-cheek tone: "just bashed my head on the cabinet door." It's also used when explaining a real bandage or visible wound to friends online.

The head-bandage emoji has evolved in casual messaging to mean broader types of emotional or metaphorical hurt. People use it ironically when they've had a rough day, gotten rejected, or experienced something that stings. The humor lies in treating everyday emotional wounds the same way you'd treat a physical injury—overly dramatic but relatable.

Approved as part of Unicode Emoji 1 in 2015, this emoji maintains a consistent, immediately clear design across platforms. It rarely gets confused with other faces, though it occasionally overlaps with the bandage emoji when discussing first aid in general.