Goth Girl Hypnosis
Where did all the e-girls go?
(Presented at Montara for the OCF slideshow night Nov 22, 2025)
Who asked?
I was texting my friend and they mentioned to me that Grimes had dropped a new song, Artificial Angels.
Here is the cover art for the song, which I like quite a bit:
I was interested in the style Grimes had in this picture, so I texted my friend back the following:
The pigtails, the gun, the blurry photo quality, the makeup style, the tattoos... if I had to name specifics. Grimes just felt similar to the girls purge! uses in his cover art.
My struggle there to find a solid term for this style she evoked made me curious. At what point in time did we start to see it?
The E-girl Prime
Source: u/taivallan reddit post
So, we're looking at about 2019, during the COVID-19 lockdown. Back when the "e-girl" formed and was more strictly culturally defined. You know what else became culturally defining at the exact same time?
That's right! Belle Delphine's instagram account.
Her instagram shut down some time ago, but if you were there... you know. I don't think I realized it back then, but now I believe that she had a huge impact on female beauty standards that we're still feeling the effects of. She was the e-girl.
She had all the e-girl hobbies, too, and they appeared frequently in her content.
- Video games
- Anime
- Hints of lolita fashion
- Niche internet references, memes, etc
- And more general "nerd" signaling
Speaking of anime, who could forget her famous ahegao?
Were you also here for this? Remember this??? It feels like getting shot
Sidenote
I'd also argue e-girls were a counter to the vsco girl archetype that appeared at the same time. I suppose we see the same thing playing out again in 2025, with "clean girl" versus "indie sleaze". And way back in the '80s, with the female fashion styles tied to metal versus disco. Alt styles are, in name, an "alternative" to something else. In this context, we've got styles for girls who can't or won't fit:
Source: reddit post from u/hotpocketfullofbees
This song with 58M views by Corpse dropped in 2020, in the later stages of the e-girl prime.
We can see here Emma Lange is closer in style towards the girls on purge's art than early Belle Delphine.
OK, what do goth girls have to do with this?
Well, this type of goth girl? The traditional goth girl? Not much.
I'm talking the watered down goth girl. What men who scroll instagram reels HARD call a "goth girl", because that's how this other style is referred to there. I'll put examples here so you can get more of an idea.
The pigtails and makeup with eye emphasis persist through it all.
It's a bit more concentrated than simply "alt", which is too broad. I've made my case that this style is the next iteration of the e-girl. But, it's still pretty different than what we were doing in 2019. But, what's a good term? What do you call the post e-girl?
Related stuff I'll get to later but I don't have time rn:
- phonk
- insta and car culture
- more on jfashion, anime, general japanese cultural influences
- sanrio
- mental illness
- ramona flowers, manic pixie dream girl
- bianca devins
OCF consensus: neo mallgoth - proposed by joie and felix - i dont know how i feel about this though... but it works - some just said to call it e-girl...