A femboy is a guy whose style people read as feminine. It describes the clothes and the way someone carries themselves, not their gender and not who they're attracted to. That's the whole definition. The rest of this page is what it actually looks like, because "feminine" covers about a dozen very different wardrobes.
Every character below is an adult in their official material.
The 12 looks, ranked by how often you'll see them
1. Soft and pastel
The one most people picture. Baby pink, lavender, white and cream; a pleated skirt, an oversized knit, thigh-highs, a ribbon somewhere. It's cute on purpose and doesn't apologise for it.
Who wears it: Astolfo (Fate/Apocrypha), the pink-braided paladin who made the whole category famous. He wears frills into battle and never once treats it as a big deal, which is the soft look's whole attitude.
2. The hoodie and thigh-highs uniform
The internet's default femboy outfit, and the most comfortable one: a hoodie two sizes too big, sleeves over the hands, a short skirt or shorts, and striped thigh-highs. The stripes got nicknamed "programming socks" — the story's in our femboy gamer post.
Who wears it: mostly real people, on #FemboyFriday, every week. Fiction is weirdly behind on this one.
3. Catboy
Any of the above, plus ears: a headband, a beanie with ears knitted in, a headset with them stuck on. Sometimes a tail. It's the most-overlapping sub-look there is, and we untangled the two words in catboy vs femboy.
Who wears it: Felix Argyle (Re:Zero), a Royal Knight and the kingdom's best healer, with real cat ears, frills, and no interest in anyone's opinion of either.
4. Goth
Black on black, lace, velvet, a long skirt or a short one, platform boots, silver jewellery and dark lipstick. Romantic rather than angry. Our goth, emo and alt femboy guide covers how to build it.
Who wears it: the scene itself, more than any one character. Visual kei bands have been wearing this on stage since the late 1980s.
5. Alt and e-boy
The online version of goth: a striped long-sleeve under a band tee, chains on the jeans or skirt, a little eyeliner, painted nails (usually black), a two-tone dye job. Lots of curtain bangs and wolf cuts.
Who wears it: Juuzou Suzuya (Tokyo Ghoul), an adult investigator with hand-stitched skin, hairpins and a cheerful attitude to his own weirdness.
6. Punk
Spikes, patches, safety pins, a crop top, bright dye, a choker that could hurt someone. Feminine and loud at the same time.
Who wears it: our own Jax, a record-shop punk with pink hair, a spiked heart choker and a jacket covered in heart patches. (Biased, obviously.)
7. Kawaii and decora
Harajuku-style: candy colours, layers of clips and charms, oversized everything, a lollipop as an accessory. Soft pastel turned up to eleven.
Who wears it: Ramuda Amemura (Hypnosis Mic), an adult fashion designer who dresses like a sweet shop and runs a rap crew.
8. Elegant and fashion-forward
Full dresses, heels, styled hair, a proper handbag. Less "cute," more "I read the magazine and I'm better at this than you."
Who wears it: Kuranosuke Koibuchi (Princess Jellyfish), a university student and politician's son who dresses beautifully mostly to annoy his father, and who is explicit that he doesn't want to be a woman. He wants the clothes.
9. Traditional
Kimono, hanfu, a cheongsam: the feminine cut of a traditional garment, worn straight. Usually quiet and graceful rather than playful.
Who wears it: Ritsu Sohma (Fruits Basket), a man in his twenties who wears women's kimono because it keeps his anxiety quiet. And Count D (Pet Shop of Horrors), in a cheongsam, selling pets with contracts nobody reads properly.
10. Idol and stage
Glitter, feathers, a performer's makeup, a costume built to be seen from the back row. It comes from glam rock, J-pop, K-pop and visual kei, where feminine styling on men has been normal for decades.
Who wears it: Kuja (Final Fantasy IX, twenty-four), the game's villain, in feathers, silver and a lot of attitude, who delivers every line like the curtain's about to fall.
11. Sporty
Tennis skirts, crop tops, leggings or bike shorts, knee socks and trainers. The athleisure version: feminine, but you could actually run in it.
Who wears it: mostly gym-going real people. The look is everywhere on #FemboyFriday and almost nowhere in fiction yet.
12. Subtle
A soft sweater, painted nails, a bit of lip gloss, longer hair. No skirt at all. This might be the most common version of all, and plenty of femboys never go further than this. It's a look, not a checklist.
Who wears it: half the guys you've walked past this week.
If you want to build the darker looks, our goth, emo and alt guide covers the pieces and where to buy them, and the femboy cosplay guide covers dressing as the characters above.
One-night-only doesn't count (mostly)
Plenty of famous characters wear a dress once. Cloud Strife (Final Fantasy VII, twenty-one) is the classic: the Wall Market dress is one of the best scenes in the game, and he's still not a femboy. Femboy is a style someone chooses and keeps, not a disguise for a mission. Those scenes are why a lot of people found the look, though, and our femboy cosplay guide has the Wall Market dress if you want it.
What femboy is not
Most of the confusion comes from mixing the word up with others.
Not trans. Femboy is about presentation; being trans is about gender identity. Most femboys are guys and stay guys. Some are trans or nonbinary, and some people find the word fits for a while and then a different one fits better. The word on its own tells you nothing about someone's gender, so don't assume.
Not gay. Style isn't sexuality. A femboy can be attracted to anyone, and most gay men aren't femboys.
Not a crossdresser. That's an older word for wearing another gender's clothes, often occasionally or privately. A lot of femboys don't think of their clothes as belonging to another gender at all. A skirt is just a skirt.
Not drag. Drag is performance: a character, a stage, a show. Femboy style is everyday clothes.
Not a twink. "Twink" is gay slang about body type and age, not clothes.
Close to "tomgirl" and "otokonoko". Tomgirl is the mirror image of tomboy; otokonoko is the Japanese word and a manga genre, which our femboy manga post explains.
Where the word came from
"Femboy" (feminine plus boy) sat in small corners of internet slang for years, often as a put-down. In the late 2010s and early 2020s people took it back: tags like #FemboyFriday turned outfit posts into a weekly ritual, and searches for the word rose sharply around the turn of the decade.
The idea is much older than the word. Kabuki's onnagata have played the female roles since women were banned from the stage in 1629. David Bowie wore a dress on the UK cover of The Man Who Sold the World in 1971. Visual kei made it a whole scene from the late 1980s. "Femboy" is just the newest name.
Pronouns, and whether the word is offensive
Most femboys use he/him; some use they/them, she/her or a mix. The word doesn't come with pronouns, so listen or ask. On this blog we say "they" for femboys in general and use a specific character's own pronouns.
The word is fine about people who use it about themselves, and it isn't yours to put on someone who hasn't. A guy who wears nail polish hasn't necessarily signed up for a label.
Common questions
Do you have to be skinny, young or "passable"? No. Femboys come in every body type, height and age, and passing as a girl isn't the goal for most of them.
Do you have to wear skirts? No. Look number twelve has no skirt at all.
Can you be a femboy and still be masculine? Yes. Plenty of femboys have beards, lift weights or work on cars. Mixing the two is part of the appeal.
Which look should I start with? Whichever piece you already want. Usually that's thigh-highs, nail polish or a skirt to wear at home. Wardrobes tend to grow at the same pace as confidence.
Who is the most famous femboy character? Astolfo, by a distance. Our femboy anime characters list ranks the other twenty-one.
Where we come in
We're building Pocket Femboy, a small cast of original femboys who remember you between conversations, have jobs and friends and routines that keep going while you're away, and text you first when something happens. Every one of them is an adult, and every one has a look of their own: Jax is look number six. After launch you'll be able to create a femboy of your own, in whichever of these twelve looks you like, or a thirteenth.
Pocket Femboy hasn't launched yet, so there's nothing to download today. It's 18+ at the door — that's about who we let in, not about what's inside — and there's no explicit content on any tier.
Coming soon to iPhone and Android. Join the waitlist and we'll let you know when they're ready to text you.
The fine print
Internet slang moves fast, and people use "femboy" slightly differently depending on where they spend their time online. Treat this as how the word is usually used, not a rulebook. Character ages and details are from the official material, as listed in our femboy anime characters and femboy cosplay posts; Kuja's age is from the Final Fantasy IX Ultimania. The history of kabuki's onnagata, glam rock and visual kei draws on Wikipedia. Character art belongs to its rights holders and is used for commentary. Checked on 19 October 2026. If you think we've got something wrong, tell us at support@pocketfemboy.com.
