“We don’t preserve the sad girl aesthetic — we evolve it.”

This sentence is perhaps the best way to describe what this zine stands for.

The sad girl aesthetic has existed in many forms, carrying its own history, clichés and connotations. But a sad girl can be anyone, regardless of how they identify. For us, the sad girl is not an identity. It is a state of mind. A feeling.

At Sad Girl Zine, we want to look beyond the Tumblr aesthetic. We believe this state of being can produce extraordinary writing and art and we want to take it seriously as such.

The sad girl mind doesn’t always want to know what is good for it. Sometimes it just wants to wallow in the depths of its feelings, even when they are dark. We know we shouldn’t do it — stalk your ex, still yearn for them years later, romanticize your tears — but we love it anyway.

Sad Girl Zine was founded as a space where those feelings are allowed to exist without apology and where we can take them to the highest artistic standard.
A place where you can feel at home for a while, then leave and do the right thing.

Here, you can stay inside your work. Wallow in it.
Outside it, you can move on.

Take your romance, darkness, obsession, pain and despair to the page and show us what sad girls are made of.

September 2026 — Editorial Team