Mark Megahan
E-girls are a subset of young ladies who’s “defining qualities” are that they’re “hot and online.” Not quite the same as traditional traffic generating “influencers,” who make their real life into an aspiration for their followers, these girls aren’t out to pass along travel tips or helpful gardening information. They’re more of a legend in their own mind. Surprisingly, it works as well for them as their fans, so they found a hot and successful niche to fill.
E-girls have a hot niche to fill
E-girls startled the anthropologists and tossed their dogma out the window. Culture and more importantly, sub-culture, according to the experts, are supposed to be a form of “political rebellion” in young people. The only problem is the experts who came up with that theory, which was probably right at the time, never dreamed of the internet.
More specifically they couldn’t have conceived in their wildest hallucinations the sort of things young, attractive women take for granted every day. Things like Instagram and TikTok.
Sociologists have a hard time trying to figure out the connections between clothing, music, and socioeconomic status because, as a group, e-girls “exist exclusively in the digital ether.” Experts can’t even be sure it is a sub-culture. Hip young people don’t make a culture by themselves.
Their stardom comes entirely from “their digital personas.” Those, in turn, generally only appear when “they’re in their bedrooms, alone.” At least the cosplay girls go to fan conventions. That’s something sociologists expect and gets them back in their comfort zone.
According to the experts, you’re almost never going to see e-girls in real life. You may see the girl, but she’ll be another ordinary girl, doing ordinary things, wearing ordinary clothes.
“To be an e-girl is to exist on a screen, mediated. You know an e-girl by her Twitch presence or the poses she makes on her Instagram, not by what she wears to school.”
They do have stereotypes
While they may not be a full-fledged culture group of their own, there are enough stereotypes to make e-girls recognizable. At least, to each other and their fanbase.
“She will almost never be wearing her natural hair color (lime green, pink, or half-black, half-white hair are popular shades) and will almost certainly be wearing winged eyeliner.”
Another dead giveaway are the clothes. E-girls love recycled Instagram influencer clothes and buy them from Depop day and night. They also have places like Dolls Kill bookmarked.
The site considers itself an “online boutique for misfits.” No wardrobe is complete without a full range of mesh T-shirts, colorful hair clips, Sailor Moon skirts and O-ring collars.
On top of those basics come optional layers incorporating “little bits of skate culture, hip-hop, anime, cosplay, BDSM, and goth.”
E-girls don’t make any excuses for being egotistic because all they care about is “their hotness and onlineness.“
