soft girl

Soft girl is just one of several so-called “girl” types, such as egirls and VSCO girls, that spread on the social video-sharing app TikTok in the late 2010s. While egirls are known for a goth look and VSCO girls a 1990s vibe, the soft girl dons on a cuter, pinker, more sentimental aesthetic, all qualities meant to be summed up by the word soft.

There are many items associated with a stereotypical soft girl: pink, blue, and mustard yellow shades; flower, heart, and cloud patterns; t-shirts incorporating such words as baby, princess, and angel; hair clips; baggy sweaters and plaid schoolgirl skirts; crop tops and high-waisted jeans; and heavy blush and lip gloss.

this is giving me soft girl vibes, pls she looks so good in this aesthetic pic.twitter.com/iPrJ4YdFai

— emily³⁶⁵ (@twiceseokie) December 18, 2019

While we can find soft girl on social media describing various types of women or young women as “sweet” and “sensitive” in the 2010s (and earlier), the term soft girl, as associated with this particular look, appears to begin in 2018 online. Soft girl takes off in earnest in 2019, getting its first Urban Dictionary in April that year. It became a wider topic of conversation online in November and December.

Soft girl is likely influenced by a slightly older term: soft boy, sometimes written as softboi. This is a slang term for young man who adopts a gentle, Kpop-inspired, more stereotypically feminine style and manner. While soft boy is sometimes used kindly, it can also be used an insult, we should note.

But, being a soft girl isn’t just about looks. It’s also about expressing emotions, being sentimental or romantic, and embracing one’s tender, more gentle side—that is, being emotionally soft and vulnerable.

In December 2019, Adrienne Matei wrote a notable piece in the Guardian consider how the soft girl, while seemingly easy to dismiss as childish, may be a critique of power dynamics and a form of self-empowerment.