A group of lean white boys dressed in ripped black jeans mean-mug in front of an iPhone, in turn running their hands, some tipped with black nail polish, through their heavily dyed hair and throwing bloodless hand signs. Between the writhing, they lip sync to a trap song by Savage Ga$p, an artist whose most popular song on Spotify with over 80 million streams is the adroitly named “E-girls are ruining my life!” The video has been played over three million times and has close to half a million likes on TikTok.
Separately, TikTok legend and certified e-boy Noen Eubanks posits, in a video to his 11 million followers: “Weird things girls find attractive: The eye roll thing, choking, chain biting, veins.” He demonstrates each point, then asks the camera, smiling: “Did it work?”
Once a subculture that existed merely within the confines of snappy video clips uploaded onto the frenzied platform that is TikTok, e-boys have since entered the mainstream. In 2019, e-boys were among the most popular Google searches of the year, according to the platform’s annual Year in Search report.
They also dominate screens and runways alike. Givenchy’s Fall ’21 collection — replete with leather outerwear, pastel shades and metallic accents — was dubbed as an “e-boy wet dream” by one journalist. Eubanks himself was tapped by Hedi Slimane to be the new face of Celine in late 2019.
The aesthetic of an e-boy is decidedly androgynous: think fringes that coquettishly come down past the eyes and baggy sweaters — the black-and-white stripe pattern being the most frequently parodied — all paired with svelte midriffs that they aren’t afraid to bare.
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