alt girl
An alt girl is a girl or woman whose style borrows from alternative scenes like goth, punk, emo and grunge. Think black clothes, band tees, chains, fishnets, platform boots, dyed hair and heavy eyeliner. “Alt” is short for alternative.
What does alt girl mean?
The label describes a look first and a personality second. Someone gets called an alt girl because of how she dresses: darker colors, thrifted or DIY pieces, piercings, bold makeup, maybe a skateboard or a stack of vinyl in the background of her photos. There is no single uniform, which is part of the point. An alt girl might lean goth one day and grunge the next.
The term was around long before social media, but it became a popular label on TikTok around the turn of the 2020s, when “alt” outfit videos and transformation clips filled people’s feeds.
How people use it
- “She went full alt girl over the summer: black lipstick, chains and platform boots.”
- “My For You page is nothing but alt girl outfit videos now.”
- “He keeps saying his type is alt girls, which mostly means girls with winged eyeliner.”
- “Is it still an alt girl look if everything came from the mall?”
It can be a compliment, a simple description, or a stereotype. When someone talks about alt girls as a dating “type,” it often flattens a whole subculture into a costume, and plenty of people who dress this way find that annoying.
Alt girl vs. e-girl
The two overlap a lot and people mix them up constantly. The rough difference: an e-girl style grew up online, with anime and gaming influences, pink blush, little drawn-on hearts and a streaming-room backdrop. An alt girl style pulls more from older music subcultures like punk, goth and grunge. Plenty of outfits sit somewhere in between.
Related terms
Example sentence
She went full alt girl over the summer: black lipstick, chains and platform boots.
Similar words
alternative girl
Notes
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