What Is an E-Girl?

Since the mid-20th century, each generation has had their own version of what is now known every bit an e-girl. Think back to the British punks, in tartan and T-shirts destroyed past safe pins. In the '80s, they were chosen goths, loved the Cure, and dressed in all black, with black hair, and intentionally pale peel. In the 2000s, it was the angsty, pop-punk emo girls who listened to My Chemical Romance and took Facebook photos like this. And now, information technology'due south the age of the e-girl, who stamps  black hearts on her cheekbones, listens to Chiliad-pop, and dresses like she's auditioning for a reboot of The Craft.

The prototypical e-daughter is really more of an idea — an aesthetic rather than a person. As the ancestor "due east" would imply, the e-girl is also "very online" — maybe she's a gamer, a cosplayer, or spends a lot of fourth dimension on TikTok. Tumblr, the dinosaur medium used by emo-girls of yore (2010s), also makes upwards a big part of the east-girl online diet. The style is heavily influenced by Asian culture, specifically anime and K-pop. YouTuber Jenna Marbles called it a mix betwixt "Harajuku, emo, and Igari makeup, the hangover makeup in Japan." Think Harley Quinn with rudimentary picture show-editing skills.

The e-girl'south hair doesn't stay the same colour for too long — often it's pinkish, royal, dark-green, anything other than its natural shade. She shares the aesthetic nihilism of her foremothers, emo girls, punks, and goths, with the bright, cutesy accents you'd expect to see in cartoons. Death (crosses, guns) and bondage (chokers, fishnets) are running motifs, covered in a bubblegum-pinkish filter and finished with a hint of blush on the nose, to brand her look a little bit sickly. Like the VSCO girl — 2020s answer to the basic bitch — in that location's a whole genre of "transformation videos" where people "go e-girls." They aren't really making fun of them, rather taking the aesthetic to its highest level. A pop TikTok format used the "e-girl manufacturing plant" to modify otherwise "normal" people, or in one case, Peppa Pig, into e-girls or east-boys. Aye, there are e-boys, too. The labels are binary but the artful is not. E-boys accept pretty much the same aesthetic, except they often office their hair like a '90s heartthrob.

It's changed over fourth dimension. The earliest definition on Urban Lexicon is from 2009, and says that an e-daughter is someone who is "always after the D." The term is ever used to describe "very online" women, just it used to be a lot more derogatory. Definitions on Urban Dictionary that are dated before 2017 tend to be riffs on the same idea — they're promiscuous women who invade male person spaces (the cyberspace and its games) by being sexy. Every bit one entry from 2014 put it, "An e-girl is an internet slut. A girl who tends to flirt with many online guys. Her earth revolves effectually getting attention from professional gamers as well as guys who are extremely east-thirsty … Calling a girl an 'eastward-girl' is an insult. You might as well be calling her a hoe who's sub thirsty."

The first wave of articles from mainstream media outlets almost e-girls came years later, after a teenager was murdered in 2019 and photos of her were shared online. Bianca Devins, who was 17 years onetime, was killed by a human she met through a gaming app. With a pink bob and a documented affection for chains, cobwebs, and Hello Kitty, Devins was characterized as an east-girl in the surrounding media coverage. She is too an extreme example of the kind of harassment female person gamers become regularly.

But the current use of the characterization is tonally benign, verging on dismissive. The term likely softened because of its popularity on TikTok and in meme pages. Even if they're mocking eastward-girls, teens making videos that show their faces on TikTok are less viscous than anons on gaming forums.

No. I'd fence that now, years removed from the early Urban Dictionary entries, the term has softened to just draw the aesthetic. And the "e-daughter factory" videos, among others, have helped button the look into the mainstream via TikTok. YouTuber Linzor did one such video where she transformed into 9 different due east-girls, which involved 9 dissimilar wigs and vintage tees layered over striped tees, fishnets, barrettes, harnesses, and h2o dabbed under her eyes to smudge her dramatic, winged liquid liner to prove that, "I've been crying, because I'm an due east-girl." She paints on a nosebleed for some. Some other represents the "strict parent e-daughter," the one who can't color her pilus, but is working with only with clothing (fishnet long sleeve shirt underneath a Disney princess-y purple peak, and glitter stickers on her face).

In a video for Vogue, Doja Cat, a rapper who has been described every bit the TikTok diva of your dreams, described her e-daughter look as "[looking] like she but got pneumonia." Turns out, it takes a lot of work to expect that sick. "I remember being on Pinterest and I didn't know what an due east-daughter was," she said. "I just saw these emo girls, similar Tumblr girls, and I saw them looking similar they were sick, merely it looked intentional, like they were wearing a lot of makeup. So … now I practice that."

The makeup isn't so much a sign that the wearer is punk rock (or actually ill) it's that the e-girl is trying to portray that they're in need of protection, innocent, or helpless. As such, one of the signatures of eastward-girl makeup is wearing a bit of blush on your olfactory organ. Similar you only got a cold. Their persona relies a lot on submissive feminine stereotypes, fifty-fifty every bit the costumes they choose are brash and ambitious. It's baby. (Vox likened the aesthetic to "Daddy Dom Little Girl" kink. Which … you can fill in the blanks there.) The #egirl on Tumblr shows a 2:i ratio of e-girl outfit inspiration and soft-core porn. The VSCO girl, past comparison, is a bit more innocent, even with all of the bikini pics. One of the interesting things nearly e-girls is that they are seemingly more than quick to comprehend their title than others niche groups — almost similar they're signaling their authenticity online. Whereas tagging a photo "vscogirl" is likely cloaked in irony, tagging a photo of yourself "e-daughter" is self-aware, cocky-promotion.

If an e-girl exists as a person in existent life — and I'd fence that she does — they'd be a lot like Xepher Wolf. She paints on her olfactory organ and under her eyes, and likes her makeup to be "confrontational." Wolf is a college student studying fashion pattern in Los Angeles with 174,000 followers on Instagram. She'southward a bit older than the typical e-daughter teen, merely she is influenced past the aforementioned anime and video games, specifically Legend of Zelda, and says her fashion influences are "the art world, anime, and medieval and renaissance things."

She says she knows some other people in the culling scene who wait down on e-girls for copying their gothic expect. "Due east-girls get a bad rap, and I don't think they should. Information technology'southward but a mode," Wolf said. "Sure, some e-girls are probably doing information technology for the trend, just I'm not offended by that. Everyone has the correct to express themselves."

While you'll see plenty of e-girls online, it'due south rarer to see one in the wild. So if you run across someone with eye stamps under her optics out in public, consider yourself blessed.

What Is an E-Girl?