ใกใใใฃใ It's Spacy! Today i want to talk about something that has been on my mind for a while, and that is gyaru and how black culture influenced and influences to this day, gyaru. This is a history based blog post, meaning I won't really dive deep into arguments of gyaru being blackface, rather, I will simply be talking about its history..... and maybe give my opinion towards the end! Let's start
Before you proceed with reading: I'm not intending to start discourse with this, I just like history, this blog is also pretty image heavy since I can't make claims without adding pics or evidence
Since the very early beginnings of gal, the elements of tanning has basically always been there, from the earliest kogals, where a very essential part of being kogyaru was being tan. Being tanned was such a fundamental part of 90's gyaru to the point where being tan was a standard for being a gal.
Now, to diverge from what i first wrote, something to understand about 90's japan is how black, specifically black American and Caribbean trends and culture had a huge influence on rebellious youth culture. Japanese youths who were obsessed with hip hop and reggae in the 90's would do this by darkening their skin, wearing dreads, some would get fades and would do things such as learning hip hop dances or learning how to rap. Many of these Japanese youths would hang around dance halls, where they would go to dance and have fun with their friends in so called 'black style'. Now, this so called 'Black style' is not unique to Japan, as in places like America, we see the phenomenon of non black people getting dreads or box braids, talking in a specific way to 'appear more black.'
As 1998 came to a close, EGG magazine, originally a gravure magazine for men, starting to change it's demographic to target the new crazy craze called 'gyaru'. This was a bit before ganguro boomed. In these early egg magazines targetted towards kogals, they would promote not only things like tanning salons, but they also promoted music as well, I want to specifically mention a group called 'Love& Soul', where the members were sporting black hairstyles in their single covers.
For this research, I actually went out of my way to listen to their second single, you can clearly hear the influences of black american r&b, but also how the song has a bit of a japanese twist with it. The influences of black culture being promoted within gyaru can be found within the origins of it. As ganguro boomed in the late 90's, you can see how gals tans started to become darker or oranger, more gals with permed hair and some like Aoki Noa, a teen gal model who was popular in 1999 egg editions, sporting box braids.
....Now, in 1999, a rumour came from underground shibuya, of a ganguro in huge platform heels, with a tan darker then any gal and a unique fashion style like no other. EGG immediately started searching for this gal... who was no other than Buriteri!
Buriteri, or Mari Kodama (I don't think her actual name is disclosed). Was a very popular e-girl, and often credited with being the founder of the now extinct substyle, gonguro. I talked about Gonguro on my twitter, but Gonguro is essentially ganguro.... but even darker! According to Galture, there are 3 stages to tanning, ganguro (lightest) gonguro, and Bachiguro, where bachiguro is somehow even darker then gonguro! Although Gonguro is effectively dead now, it lives on in Yamanba gyaru, in which Buriteri is the self proclaimed founder of! The reason I'm getting into the nitty gritty of gonguro is because gonguro is considered blackface by many gals, as even though buriteri and the 3 gonguro siblings with U weren't essentially going around rapping and dancing with box braids in, it does somewhat link to what I said about youths influenced by black american culture, mainly because many of these youths of 90's japan used black american culture as a representation of their rebellion against traditional values, although 90's gals weren't tanning because they wanted to be 'black'.
I think it can also be mentioned that 'blackening' of the skin was sometimes done for the ridiculous value, like sometimes it they were so dark it was supposed to be comical (?)
Even with the shiro gal boom started by ayu, gals getting box braids and tans never stopped, with early 2000's egg magazines promoting black american artists like missy elliot, Ashanti, beyonce and many more, evening having an interview with Ashanti herself in their January 2005 edition
They used to explain to gals with box braids how to style their hair with box braids, usually, these gals would sport their box braids with multiple colours, usually 3-4, sometimes the hair is curled or crumpled. I've mainly used egg as my reference for this blog post since it is very much a gyaru bible. In egg magazines, they also used to promote pricing and extension packs for black hairstyles. The appropriation of black hair styles can be best seen when reading 2003-2006 egg magazines.
What im effectively saying is that the appreciation of black culture, but the ways it was expressed, which was appropriation some what go hand in hand, interviewing a black artist, while also having eggmos sporting a full head of box braids a few pages back.
All of this has been said to highlight that appreciation for black culture in Japan can sometimes diverge into a fetish for it, I think the same can be applied for gyaru, as some gals took their appreciation for gyaru to a level where the lines between appreciation and fetichism were blurred. This is also a reason why non gals view gyaru as blackface, as they view gals as taking elements of black culture and making it a symbol of their rebellion, which isn't necessarily the case for gyaru as a subculture.... but in the case of individual gals, lets talk a bit about b-gyaru
I mentioned in my blogpost about music when discussing one of my favourite artists minmi, that dancehall, reggae, soca and caribbean music styles were very popular with b-gals. B-gyaru in itself actually derives from the word B-boy or B-girl, which is type of dance moved, often a term used also to describe members of hip hop communities. Originally when I was a baby gal, I kinda thought B-gyaru meant 'Black gyaru' due to their 'expressions' of black culture, but it didn't. B-gals took heavy inspiration from black american street wear, and urban street wear, often listened to hip hop, reggae and R&B and very much picked and chose what elements of Black culture they were gonna use. B-Gyaru is also a somewhat dead substyle, mainly because reiwa gals have tuned down a few notches, and some black gals have even reclaimed B-Gyaru and B-Kei as their own, but the act of getting box braids has never left gyaru in general which brings me to the final act of this discussion.
Ever since the gyaru started making its resurgence at the start of the Reiwa period, gyaru has been brought back into the spotlight, but also has further reaches international communities. With this, there have been many criticisms of gals sporting box braids. Recently seen with the criticisms against top egg model Momoa Seto. Many other gals have also been criticised for this such as Tanaka Fuki (LOALO) and 9696choppasama to name a few off the top of my name. Now, some j-gals are very much conscious and understand what cultural appropriation is, however, some j-gals (to put it nicely), don't give a shit when people try to educate them on CA, probably because of the gal mindset of not listening to people who criticise their live style, and continue to wear box braids despite this. It really goes to show that the ways gals have gone about showing their admiration and appreciation for black culture wasn't entirely good.
However, this post isn't just about appropriation, but the influence. During the Heisei era of gal R&B, Hip Hop and Eurobeat were very popular with gals, and that hasn't changed to this day, but in Reiwa era, many gals will often listen to rap music, shitty rap music, but rap music, obviously influenced by american rappers. Rappers like AWICH and Elle Teresa are pretty popular these days, personally, one of my favourite j-reggae artists is 775, with artists like Red Spider and Minmi still making music despite debuting decades ago. Gals also really love so called 'Jamaican style', with LOALO model Shiochamo getting 'Jamaican style' hair and nails, same with EGG model Momoa Seto.
Very funnily enough, Shiochamo captioned one of her IG posts 'raggamuffin, I love a pickled rasta' which means is slang for a child in dirty clothing (and also sub genre of reggae and dancehall but the narrative is still funny).... and she also added her location as 'Jamaca' misspelling Jamaica. Sometimes gals appreciation for black culture doesn't alway spiral into the nitty gritties of cultural appropriation but definitely a weird admiration, weird enough to get a huge Jamaican flag painted on ur nails despite being fully japanese.
Now to finish this blog post because I'm neglecting my school work, it's undeniable to say that gals from heisei to reiwa were influenced by the style and culture of african americans and black people as a whole, but sometimes this appreciation was expressed in ways that are due some criticism. There is undeniable influence of black culture, but also some undeniable problematic elements, that are mostly dead in our current era, but not completely.
I hope this post was to controversial and I also hope the clickbait in the title didn't make some people mad because ๐ญ
Bye bye - Spacy!
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