What makes an Alt Girl?

Hi! I'm pretty new to this board, so an introduction is in order. I'm a
student and freelance illustrator, and I go by Lux. (Feel free to check my
profile if you need more meat, no pun intended at default.) I'm planning
to get my first tattoo (sankofa, back of the neck) as part of a series of
3 or so tatts (lower back, navel, sleeve).

So, here's my noobish inquiry. I'm kind of curious about what it means to
be an "alt-girl". (Is it an image thing, for example?) What does
alternative beauty mean to you?

There. Have at it

it's a girl who can't stop pressing the Alt button on her keyboard.

fucking hot, those girls are.

To make you very first post by starting new thread on boards was not such a good idea. This sounds like something which belongs to your blog not on the boards.

If the answer you are looking for is that you need to have tattoos in order to become suicide girl then you got it wrong.

You see....when a Rivethead and a Gutterpunk love each other......they want to express that love....physically......

to a slinky bassline and a sick backbeat

Count is wrong. Question is more than suitable for this board.

It's definately an image thing. More of an interent thing though I guess. To break away from the mainstream and create something original or different to the masses. Not that half the SG sets on here do that though...

Judging by the hits on Google, virtually no one who has any association with what they think is an "alt girl" actually uses the term "alt girl". It's meaningless, even to people who normally bandy about meaningless words ("hipster", "emo", "embiggens").

Embiggens is a perfectly cromulent word.

yeah. that about sums it up.

Pretty much this.

Purely in terms of image, yeah, what Viking said. I'd also add clothing style to the list, though there's a broad spectrum there so it's hard to simply list the possibilities.

"Be yourself" is a cliche, but I think it's a pretty reasonable observation that the most interesting girls at this site are intrinsically interesting rather than interesting because of what style or look they try to emulate.

You have a very striking look and it seems like you have a feeling for design and visual imagery as applied to yourself. I think you're well on the way.

Do what you want, and who gives a fuck.

This means in apperance. lifestyle, whatever.

For TLDR: "What motivates your styling choices?"

I understand the negativity associated with labeling. I'd rather not generalize if it can be helped, and the initial post was an attempt to gauge the conversational expectations of this board. I picked up "alt girl" arbitrarily to describe the "Suicide Girl"/hardcore/punk/what-have-you image, as "alternative beauty" is used on the very front-page of this website. My unfamiliarity with this site and its membership has me starting out with the basics. There may be no appropriate or entirely sensitive way to pose this question, but my intention is not to pigeonhole. Apologies if that is what I seemed to be doing.

My curiosity regarding how people identify themselves on this board stems from the observation that this site features Suicide Girls and members who have adopted a particular shared image, one that challenges "mainstream" ideals of beauty. People have done and expressed this in various ways. I think a better question, then, would be, "How do you define mainstream beauty?" or "How do you define beauty for yourself?"

I'm sure that identity is a more complicated issue than "a collection of tattoos and piercings", though there are people who do feel emotionally and psychologically invested in their bodies. There's certainly nothing wrong with expressing yourself through your body. This is why I posted this question in the first place. If I would reword the question differently, it would read like, "What keeps you doing what you're doing?" or "What motivates your styling choices?"

So far, I really appreciate this discussion. As for blogging, I don't feel like that's the most comfortable or productive outlet for me in terms of engaging with people on this board. I'm more about jumping right into the volcano. Without a parachute. Naked. (Terrible movie reference, I know.)

You're going to need a new wardrobe.

fiatlux said:

SPOILERS! (Click to view)

For TLDR: "What motivates your styling choices?"

I understand the negativity associated with labeling. I'd rather not generalize if it can be helped, and the initial post was an attempt to gauge the conversational expectations of this board. I picked up "alt girl" arbitrarily to describe the "Suicide Girl"/hardcore/punk/what-have-you image, as "alternative beauty" is used on the very front-page of this website. My unfamiliarity with this site and its membership has me starting out with the basics. There may be no appropriate or entirely sensitive way to pose this question, but my intention is not to pigeonhole. Apologies if that is what I seemed to be doing.

My curiosity regarding how people identify themselves on this board stems from the observation that this site features Suicide Girls and members who have adopted a particular shared image, one that challenges "mainstream" ideals of beauty. People have done and expressed this in various ways. I think a better question, then, would be, "How do you define mainstream beauty?" or "How do you define beauty for yourself?"

I'm sure that identity is a more complicated issue than "a collection of tattoos and piercings", though there are people who do feel emotionally and psychologically invested in their bodies. There's certainly nothing wrong with expressing yourself through your body. This is why I posted this question in the first place. If I would reword the question differently, it would read like, "What keeps you doing what you're doing?" or "What motivates your styling choices?"

So far, I really appreciate this discussion. As for blogging, I don't feel like that's the most comfortable or productive outlet for me in terms of engaging with people on this board. I'm more about jumping right into the volcano. Without a parachute. Naked. (Terrible movie reference, I know.)

I'm replying simply because this is one of the most interesting (and well-written) posts/threads I've seen in Lifestyle in quite a while. As someone who's been here a while, I'd like to offer my opinions (such as they are, and unsolicited, no less).

First off, welcome to the site.

Secondly (and this is just my opinion, so I'm just speaking for me), I think that the "alternative beauty" hook on the front page is a bit of clever marketing, and that there's no easy definition of what alternative beauty means. Obviously, everyone will have their own idea of what it means to them, because it's subjective.

I know the reason I joined was because the girls at the time looked like the girls I hung out with in real life- and because they looked interesting, like they had a story or two to tell. And the thing that's kept me around this long?

Some of them did.

I was coming to this thread with a heart full of snark, but in light of MisterSatan's earnest comment I can't bring myself to do it.

I signed up for 2 reasons- I used to read the boards before I was a member and they were full of really awesome people talking about great stuff that I normally couldn't talk about with most people. And the girls were hot.

When I signed up one of my friends (unbeknowst to me) was already an SG (that would be Tiamat).

Basically to meet badass girls who liked to ride motorcycles, throw knives, dance lewdly on tabletops, who could simultaneously talk video games, obscure cinema and French philosophy. Like outgoing, confident, telling-it-like-it-is women, who secretly had the heart of a geek. And these girls also just happened to like taking naked photos of themselves because it was cool / chill.

I remember in my first few months here I ended up designing a t-shirt for an SG based on a Kathy Acker novel (Pussy, King of the Pirates) due to a conversation we had and she sent me a pirate-themed handmade journal in return.

There's two kinds of alt, to me. There's the journey alt (lowercase j, turn off the karaoke machine), and there's the destination alt. Which sounds godawful pretentious, but no other metaphor fits as well.

Journey alt: what's it an alternative to? Whaddaya got? Whatever the establishment is, they're pushing past it or refining it until it's unrecognizable.

Destination alt: a long time ago, some journey-alt types did something really cool, and now lots of other people are doing the same thing. This kind of alt gets a bad rap, due in large part to the name: how can you call yourself "alt" when, like, you've become the establishment, man? Personally, I say fuck that noise. There's a lot of value in continually pushing away from the mainstream even as the mainstream gets dragged along in your wake--but there's also a lot to be said for finding what you want and being happy with it.

In the specific field of girls who are naked or who I wish were naked, I tend to go for some of the destination alt and some of the journey alt. Mainly, I go for girls who are memorable to me. Standard girls with standard makeup and standard hair and standard bodies are, y'know, fine for people who like that sort of thing, and I'm not knocking it. But I generally can't tell the difference between your Jessica Lohans and and your Lindsay Biels; they all just sorta seem to smear together. I'm not likely to mistake Nixon or Vivid or Tita for anyone else, though. They're what you might call visually distinct, which makes for easy indexing.

Yeah, look at us cranky old buggers swooning over the new girl.

I agree with MisterSatan about the clever marketing aspect of the "alt girl" tag. In fact, once upon a time, Playboy models were presented as "girls next door", something now presented a little more ironically in the current TV series based on whoever Hef's shagging.

New girl, you are attractive and interesting. I hope you stick around. You should blog anyway, because that way we can talk to you there, but this was a perfectly fine discussion to have out here.

You don't define mainstream beauty. Mainstream beauty is defined by number of consumers. Maxim or Playboy will sell more then magazine that focuses on tattooed women therefore it's mainstream. It reflects general taste. I think thats the only way how to really define it.

What a coincidence. I am composing a speech for tomorrow in which a portion goes on to describe how bohemians from the Romantics, to the surrealists, beatniks, and punks all share a need for their own kind's company. This is because they shared values that were not mainstream and doing that is difficult to do on one's own. And that is why big cities often formed bohemian neighborhoods like Chelsea, Greenwich Village, or Venice Beach. Arguably SG is an "internet-enabled" extension of that neighborhood mentality; it certainly was when it began.

Taking a census of a neighborhood is problematic though. Naturally some of the residents of Greenwich Village, for instance, were hardcore about those alternative values and others were there because they were simply bored. And anyway, you would never really go into Greenwich Village and say "what is a beatnik girl?" because honestly every beatnik girl was there for a different reason and she expressed herself uniquely. Can you imagine going up to some artist that stresses individuality and asking "what makes you the same as all the rest here?". This has been an age old problem with communicating with groups like this from the outside.

MisterSatan and Lemonkid: Snark, by all means There definitely seems to be an exceptional marketability to this site's content, and I suppose that can be credited to a demand for the level of interactivity it encourages. I have a feeling there's more to that, though, and the very fact that people are actively engaged with these boards hints at... some sense of commonality? Regardless of whether I'm wrong about that, I think there's something intriguing about a bunch of women defining sexiness on their own terms.

TheFuckOffKid: I'll definitely consider the blog

Thank you for posting this. While popular media is formally mediated by the market, I think that it's important to consider how this influences our opinions regarding what "mainstream" means and what types of images we assign to that category. I think that we do have some control over how we describe "mainstream beauty" in that we constantly interpret what it means (and we react to those interpretations) on individual and personal bases.

unfiltrator: You hit the nail on the head. When I posted this topic, I didn't expect to receive a uniform answer concerning what alt- girl/Suicide Girl/someone who self-identifies as part of this community means. The most I can hope to acquire in this discussion is a layman's understanding of how individuals feel about this "neighborhood" and why they chose it as an outlet for expressing themselves. Personally, one of the things that drew me to this site was this curiosity (aside from the gorgeous pics, of course). Your analogy brings this question to mind: is there perhaps, despite unique perceptions and expressions of alternative culture, some shared set of values that enables the success of this community? For example, while we're not all going to agree on what we think is sexy or unique, I think you'll find that asexual, tentacle-face automatons aren't a common turn-on here. (But it would be awesome if they were!)

I don't see myself as a member of this neighborhood, and I don't feel I've earned that yet. This thread is really meant to give people the opportunity to answer these questions themselves before I run afoul of simple etiquette and whip up some ridiculous image of what being part of this community entails. I doubt anyone wants that.

I didn't even realize the creator of the thread was a girl..

@Fiatlux

(Caveat I do feel it was more like this in the past than now) A community for people who are different. More like a band of outsiders.

The simplest etiquette tips I can give are (i) look around and see what seem to be the standards and norms, noting that they vary in different parts of the site (e.g. the Current Events board versus the Silliness board; public groups; private groups), and (ii) employ common sense. Oh, and (iii) if you do somehow transgress some norm unintentionally and get called on it, apologise and move on. We're usually pretty forgiving of people who don't get all indignant and drama-queeny when they get called out on something.

I think you'll do OK.

PS: Lemonkid is right. The "band of outsiders" feature to this site was stronger when it started than now. With thousands rather than dozens or hundreds of SGs and who knows how many members, the out-on-society's-fringes aspect of the site-as-community has lessened with time.

Also if you call TheFuckOffKid "Daddy" you're probably an alt girl. Or you're Freakpirate.