Why do some gals reject the concept of shiro gyaru?

   ちゃおっす It's Spacy! Spacygirl where have you been? I know I know it's been a month+ of complete silence on this blog. So before this blog post begins, let me talk about where i've been, time to be honest and open.

I've been struggling a lot lately trying to balance school work and my own mental health meaning i've put blogging to the side, I also have my big project coming up so i've decided to make a comeback before then, but why? I've been way too busy with school to pick myself back together to write a blog post, so now my work load is lighter I decided to write a short blog post to get myself back into the spirit.

Thank you for reading, weird to drop before the actual post starts but I just wanted to show some appreciation to the people who'll come back and read my blog posts even tho I've only uploaded a few times in the past 3 months.

So now for the actual topic, why did some gals reject the concept of shiro gyaru?

Recently I saw a viral video of Heisei gyarus talking about their love and admiration for Heisei gals of the late 90s/ early 2000s which is the peak of gyaru. Usually before I write a blog post, I pretend I own a podcast discussing my topics to myself in my room at 2am, bc thats what us unemployed folks just do.

Well to understand the divide between kuro and shiro gyaru you need to go back all the way to the origins of gyaru as a subculture as a whole? Think to yourself very carefully, what is the point of gyaru? I think the most basic answer you can give is be yourself and go against what society wants you to be. In the wikipedia article about ganguro, it states ganguro which was evolved from the kogal culture is believed by japanese scholars to be a form of rebellion against how japanese society conditioned young women of that era, ganguro and that whole culture around gyaru was almost a huge middle finger to societal standards, ganguro, gonguro, manba, yamanba and all those trends are considered rebellious, that is the nature of it. However, trends like ganguro, like gonguro as so on weren't seen as acceptable in a sense.

In my old post about the gonguro siblings with U, Mizuno Yuka, editor for egg magazine mentioned how people called them whores, sluts and said they had aids simply for the way they presented themselves, this had a huge effect on their mental health and led all 4 gonguro siblings to quit ganguro all together and gyaru a few years later, and this is the point where we stop and talk about the Ayuras and the ayu boom.

Lmao just kidding we need to talk about Namie first.

Namie amuro stepped onto the scene in 1992 with the Okinawan group super monkeys, eventually becoming the face of the group and making her solo debut with Body feels EXIT in 1995 (Listening to that song rn to set the mood pls join me) Namie Amuro became a huge icon for 90's gyaru, being the big inspo for those early era kogyaru and popularising many trends with early kogals, around this time, there was also a huge boom in marketing towards teenage girls, in 1995 specifically referred to as the 'highschool gal boom'.

Namie continued her career releasing songs like Chase the Chance, Sweet 19 blues and the behemoth of Can you celebrate released in early 1997, considered the 14th best selling song on the oricon charts and earning Namie her title as the most charismatic gal of the first generation of gals. Namie was truly on top, then in 1997, she announced her marriage and pregnancy shortly after her 20th birthday, this took a hit on her career as in the years following, she struggled with her own personal life and balancing her own career, leading to new artists in the new era of Jpop legends to enter the scene like Utada with first love in 1999, Ami suzuki with be together in 1998 and of course, Ayu bursting onto the scene in 1998 with songs like boys and girls and appears.

Now let me tell you, Ayu is a UNIT, shes the best selling solo female act in Japanese history and if I'm not correct, best selling solo  act of all time but that could be contested. Many gals saw Ayu and LOVED HER, I mean, her eurobeat remixes are still the shit in 2024.  Many gals saw ayu and thought ' I wanna be like ayu, Ayu is my idol' and this brought about the era of Ayuras, who were young girls who saw Ayu as an idol and copied her style. Things like blonde bobs, camo stuff and even Leopard print with her duty album cover in 2000. But the biggest change to the gyaru scene was that some gals... stopped tanning.

Like I said before, the 3 gonguro siblings with U quit gonguro and gyaru due to intense bullying by the general public, but because Ayu was not simply popular with gals, she was EVERYWERE! She was on popteen, VIVI seventeen, all the big fashion magazines that didn't even cater to gyaru, so many gals saw Ayu style as more acceptable and started to shift towards that style compared to styles like ganguro and yamanba. This is also the time were many of the OG gals started to mature out of gyaru as being gyaru was and still is typically scene as a highschooler thing, and that once you turn 20, you need to grow up a bit and stop doing gyaru, so many of these gals around that age group saw Ayu, who was also around that age group (early 20's) and emulated her style.

Let's also not forget about the horrid stereotypes about tanned gals of this era.

The concept of 'dirty gals is very synonymous with yamanba gyaru, with TV shows steryotypic yamanba gals to be dirty girls who never changed their underwear so they wore napkins in the panties and changed the napkin out instead of buying new underwear/washing their underwear. TV shows also depicted Yamanba gyaru of that era as never taking off their make . Yamanba gyarus were also depicted as runaways who spend the entire night in shibuya or Ikebukuro and then enter the house of single men and ask for food and accomodation for the night in what wikipedia described as 'bartering between men and women' but what I simply interpret as sexual favours but that may not be true. This reputation against yamanba gals wasn't helped by the association of enjo kosai (paid prostitution) with kogyaru which has been cemented in the mind of the general public for about 2 years now, but now with this horrible depiction of Yamanbas, it created a huge uproar and angry discussions with people of all ages on the subject.

The Ayu boom brought new trends to gyaru. Gyaru originally was very heavily inspired by American surfer and LA fashion, which explains why OG gals loved brands like Alba which was a very surfer esque brand, but now, gyaru started to also adopt elements of a sort of celebrtity style, with huge sun glasses and these Ayu celeb looking trends, things like customised flip phones and stuff. However, for now, Shiro gals and Kuro gals existed together (maybe idk im only 18) But even at this point, many hardcore gals of that era firmly rejected shirogyaru as a concept, white gals do not and cannot exist within the philospehy of gyaru, why? Because some saw shiro gyaru as bowing down to societal expectations which they believed dismissed what gyaru stood for.

Even EGG magazine even seemingly turned its back on its kuro gyaru audience in early 2001, but by 2002, Kuro gyaru was booming and EGG went on to pioneer trends like manba as so on and so forth, but we aren't here to talk about EGG magazine, not ranzuki, who gaf ab ranzuki, not even NUTS even tho I adore nuts, nope, we need to talk about Popteen!

Mie Miyashita February 2000

 Mie Miyashita February 2001

Popteen magazine is one of the older gal mags of the showa era. Think of magazines like ANAN and Non No, those and popteen are all of that same era. Popteen is definetly one of the giants of Japanese magazines, their models like Tsu chan, Rola, Nicola Fujita are all huge names in fashion even years after their Popteen graduations. Popteen's influence was huge, Namie, Ayu, boA, Koda Kumi constantly on the covers during the early to mid 2000's. Popteen also had a huge influence on the brands of Shibuya 109. This is where I am once again gonna reference toxictsukino bc her vids helped me explain this, but since popteen compared to the other magazines held the biggest influence in terms of their audience and who reads it, many brands almost pandered to popteen in a sense, Since SO MANY GALS read popteen, and also non gals, having your brand in a magazine like popteen could increase sales and...stuff, so when gyaru started to fall out of popularity with teens, read this blog post for a bigger insight into that, Popteen started to shift its target demographic away from gyaru and honestly, a lot of 109 brands started to follow, meaning lots of magazines also started to follow.

Popteen 2001

vs

Popteen 2010

In 2007 the balance between shiro gyaru and kuro gyaru was broken, this being for many reasons, the rise of Koakuma ageha and the beginings of what would be known as the ageha boom that started in 2008 where Ageha was selling 300,000 volumes. But then theres popteen.

Tsubasa Masuwaka where do we start. The 10 billion yen girl, the gal that altered an entire subculture, saying she simply defined an era is an understatement personally. Tsuchan started modelling for popteen in 2002 until 2008 with her marriage and pregnancy, the effect tsubasa sales had on the japanese economy is said to be 10 billion yen. So when Tsubasa Masuwaka stopped tanning around 2008, that had an effect on the scene aswell. Popteen always had their sweet shiro gals like Yui Kanno, but after tsu chan stopped tanning, you start to see a shift in popteen models. Models like Kumicky also started to appear at this time and Popteen very much just ditched kuro gyaru by 2010, and you can see magazines like EGG and NUTS follwowing this pattern, with EGG loosing their signboard model Watanabe Kaoru, NUTS loosing their icon hoshiaya and magazines making way to explore new trends, here comes the era of sweet shirogyarus like Nemoyayo, like Kumicky and Mizukitty, and the era of Liz Lisa and that stuff.... yeah.

However, Liz Lisa? was HUGE not simply with gyaru but with all girls. Teenage girls in the 09s+ LOVED Liz Lisa, I remember watching AKB48 fashion show on their variety show Akbingo and so many of those girls were wearing Liz Lisa .

This links back a bit to my point about popteens influence, many brands relied on these magazines and specifically, their models to understand their clientel, so when Tsuchan graduated at the same time old gal legends like Watanabe Kaoru in EGG (2009) Hoshiya Aya in NUTS (2009) Momoeri in Ageha (2009), most gyaru magazines started to fall off and their sales decreased dramatically. These magazines started to appeal to the growing shirogyaru scene and also the non gyaru scene as tanning in gyaru wasn't like it used to be.

Ah but spacy girl you're going off track, why do some gals reject the concept of shiro gyaru stick to the fucking point. Simply putting it, some hardcore gals reject the concept of shirogyaru because they think it's pandering to societal standards. Tanning in the 90's gyaru scene was the deal breaker, I mean, you could have the bleach blonde hair, the platforms, but without that tan? what truly made you recognisable as a gyaru? Tanning as an aspect was everything really, once more and more people rejected the concept of tanning, I can only believe for the hardcore gals of that era, it must've felt like people just threw away core elements of gyaru i favour of fitting in. and Hardcore Heisei gals of this era still believe this and stand by this, with them calling Reiwa girls pagyarus who put a half assed effort into everything, There was a vid that recently went viral where heisei era gyaru said that they hate and reject reiwa gyaru because they felt that Reiwa gals just dyed their hair blonde did the egg pose and called themselves gal, their feelings were half asses and even if you felt like they were coming off as entirely too harsh, I really couldn't find all the reason to entirely disagree with what they were saying. I've already talked about how magazines changed to pander to a new era of youth conservatism and the counter-culture of fitting in during those dying days of gyaru, and its easy to see why hardcore gals of both the reiwa and heisei era rejected shirogyaru and its by-products.

During 2005-2006, there was also a resurgance in that 'innocent looking vibe' that many japanese girls wanted to pick up, with actresses like Aya ueto and Erika toda making their debut in 2005/ around that time and the up and a shift in the jpop idol scene were acts like exile opted for a more ora ora rough look compared to a few years down the line where many idol groups would pander to a more sophisticated look. This type of neat look becoming popular with clearly had an impact on the kuro gyaru shiro gyaru divide, just remember, people still saw kurogyarus as dirty and in a negative light.

(note: I just remembered EXILE never called themselves idols so take that as you will don't eat me I love EXILE

By the 2010s, Ayu was still popular but she wasn't really held as the charasmatic gyaru of the era, in the 2010s that title would probably go to Nishino Kana. Kanayan had a huge influence on that sweet shirogyaru style aswell, many gals (including me lets be honest) loved her music and her style and started emulating that.

And ofc, we have the era of seiso gyaru, which even some shirogyaru would completely reject, loads of gals believed seiso gyaru was just slapping the gyaru label on something and giving the excuse that it was supposed to be 'work/school appropriate.' Many brands and magazines noticed the shift in the scene, the shift in clientele and how theyre sales were going down, and instead of trying to appeal to non gyaru audiences, some of them just up and shut down. Even tho EGG jumped on the seiso gyaru trend in a way, they never truly gave up that kurogyaru look with models like Yun, but they ended up shutting down with Koakuma ageha and NUTS in 2014 anyway, in time for the Harajuku gals to role in and... do whatever they were doing. 

Remember when I said some gals see reiwa gals as pagyarus, there's this idea that reiwa gals dress more plainly, and rather, adopt the values of gyaru and live by that, and you can see why hardcore gals say thats half assed in a sense, many believing adopting the values means nothing when you aren't actually engaging in the subculture. This whole idea of sticking by the values but still pandering to societal standards through your presentation is what some hardcore heisei gyarus say is utter bullshit. 

Combined with the rise of Harajuku girls who seemed to have a 'cleaner' image compared to shibuya gyarus, some which had criminal histories and often many shibuya gyaru magazines talked about things like sex and 'inappropriate' things in the 90's and early 2000's, it painted shibuya gyaru culture in a poor light, so my final question to you is, if your whole lifestyle is built around not conforming to what others want of you, would u accept others conforming to societal standards while wearing the same label that you stand by?

Do i personally reject the concept of shirogyaru? No, do you, do what makes you happy, not everyone can afford to tan in salons and stuff , not everyone wants to tan, not everyone is gonna believe they look good with a tan, im from the UK and girl and guy with a tan looks like a chav so I do understand, this is simply informative, i wanted to bring more insight into the inspirations and origins of the shiro and kuro gyaru divides, how popteen really influenced the gyaru scene and how many hardcore gyaru to this day reject shiro gyaru and its by-products like reiwa gyaru.

And, not all kurogals reject shirogyaru aswell. I try to stay impartial but i really hope I haven't given off the vibe that all kuro gals hate shiro gals and see them all as society boot lickers, thats obviously not true, and I also hope I haven't promoted the idea that shirogals are pagals who put no effort into being gyaru because thats obviously not true, I'm simply highlighting arguments and ideas I have scene being talked about. None of the arguments I presented represent what I actually think, although I did give my opinion a few times so take that as my stance, nor am i here to create a big discourse so.

I said this would be short but i'm also a fast typer so maybe it is short but nah, sorry ab the long wait and thank you for reading

This post isn't as image heavy mainly bc i'm still a bit lazy so 😂

-Bye bye, Spacy