soft girl

English

Noun

soft girl (plural soft girls)

1. (TikTok aesthetic) A girl who adopts a look or aesthetic involving a wholesome and feminine appearance in subdued pastel colours, as well as (often) watching anime and listening to K-pop. [from 2019]

   Synonym: softie

   • 2019 December, Nada Abdelkader, “Confused About Holiday Presents? Here's Your Gift Guide”, in Identity, page 14:

     Commemorate your relationship with siblings and cousins by buying them their team's newest jersey from your local Adidas or Nike if they're sports fans. Maybe a cute scarf or some pearl-studded hairpins if they're going for the new "soft girl" look.

   • 2019 December 4, Adrienne Matei, “TikTok's soft girls: could a hyper-cute aesthetic be a symbol of empowerment?”, in The Guardian‎^print/online:

     You will find the soft girl online, pigtailed, clad in pastels, perhaps with a spray of faux freckles – or little clouds, or hearts – painted across her blush-pinkened cheeks and highlighted nose.

   • 2021, Damian Ryan, Understanding Digital Marketing: A Complete Guide to Engaging Customers and Implementing Successful Digital Campaigns, 5th edition, Kogan Page, →ISBN, page 228:

     Soft girls often paint clouds on their cheeks and wear lots of blush and highlighter.

   • 2021 April, Dunya Mostaghimi, “How to: AeSthEt!C”, in C Magazine, volume 9, edition 4, Palo Alto High School, page 17:

     Unlike the VSCOs who tirelessly work towards ending global warming by saving one sea turtle at a time or the Dark Academics who remove themselves from the world by pretending to live in outdated times, being a soft girl requires nothing other than maintaining an ultra feminized appearance. Thus, by having one's identity be solely based upon superficial notions of beauty and more specifically ultra femininity, the Soft Girl aesthetic promotes exclusivity based on unrealistic standards of appearance.

   • 2021 April 28, “Dressed to express: The reasoning behind student fashion choices”, in The Charger Account, volume S, number 5, San Jose, Calif.: Leland High School, page 11:

     Junior Katie Wilson displays a typical soft girl aesthetic look with jewelry, a pleated skirt and frilled socks.

   • 2022 November, Vaishnavi Maloth, “Popular Makeup Aesthetics to Follow”, in Tulip, volume 13, number 5, page 66:

     Soft girl makeup, as the name suggests is a pastel, sweet style that focuses on accentuating natural features with a signature element being blush and faux freckles.

   • 2022 December 27, DeAsia Paige, “Dess Dior: Rapper”, in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution‎^print/online:

     "I got a little vulnerable (on this new music)," [Dess] Dior said. "(My old music) is a little rough, a little hard, so we're going to tap into my soft-girl era next."

Further reading

• Soft Girl on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• “soft girl”, in Dictionary.com Unabridged, Dictionary.com, LLC, 1995–present.