♡ Gyaru Doll ♡

As an older gal who's been online since like 2008, I never understood the obsession with trying to prove that you're gyaru to others or trying to be gyaru enough to be accepted online. This has always been a huge part of the online gaijin gyaru community and it still makes no sense to me. Gyaru is simply a fashion style and subculture started and popularized by teen girls who wanted to have fun and be free (in Japan no less, not exactly a carefree country) . It is not a prestigious title only reserved for the best of the best nor is it a competition. The obsession with meeting arbitrary standards is illogical and, in my opinion, truly goes against the essence of being gyaru. It also sucks the fun and joy out of it which is the saddest part.

"If you're not wearing [insert trend like false lashes, thin arched eyebrows, nude lips, nose stripe, colored contacts, gyaru brands, etc] you're not gyaru / doing it wrong."

Many gyaru "rules" are really just trends that were big in the 90s/2000s trends that everyone, gyaru or not, participated in. Arched eyebrows are a perfect example. Of course gals had thin arched brows in 2004, everyone did. But if you look at official gyaru magazines* in say 2014, the brows were much thicker because in the 2010s thin brows weren't really in anymore.

Using Egg as an example (the OG gyaru magazine) we see how much makeup changed from 2004 to 2014. In 2004 we see the arched eyebrows, deep tan, and nude glossy lips. But notice how she isn't wearing any false lashes? Is she not gyaru enough now? In the early to mid 2000s using mascara and mascara primer was more common than lashes. Lashes didn't become that popular until around 2007. In 2014, pinks and reds became more popular than nude and generally gals stopped arching their brows. Korean aegyo sal makeup also gained a lot of popularity in the 2010s, which technically isn't gyaru at all. Gals took inspiration from other styles all the time.

*BTW I'm also NOT an advocate for using gyaru magazines as the Supreme Bibles of gyaru that must be obeyed or else (which is how a lot of people in the online community tend to treat them) and I'm saying this as a huge magazine nerd. At the end of the day the magazines were designed to advertise and sell products, so they weren't always a realistic representation of how normal, everyday gals were styling themselves. The makeup and hair in the magazines look a lot more polished because they were often done by professional MUAs, not the models themselves (who were often teens and I know most of us were not doing our makeup perfectly at 17 lol). Not to mention the magazines were often highly edited and airbrushed (Koakuma Ageha was infamous for doing this).

Many "rules "people go on about today weren't really a thing depending on the time.

Look! They don't have blonde hair, false lashes, circle lenses, sujimori / curled hair, or heavy makeup yet they're still featured in Egg. This is what was considered gyaru in 1998. The gals broke the "rules" all the time because the rules never really mattered or existed in the first place. Gyaru have never been concerned with following rules anyway!

Another point I want to make is that the aesthetics are half of being gyaru. The subculture and lifestyle is just as important. Gals literally have their own way of speaking ("Gyaru-go"), they join gal circles, they dance Para Para in clubs (not so much anymore, the popularity of this peaked in the 2000s), take pictures with friends in purikura machines, and more. Looking the part is not the whole story. Focusing so much on the visuals waters down and flattens the subculture. There are many gals who don't look like a typical gal at all but who are very much considered one because they participate in the lifestyle.

Someone had a theory that Gen Z tends to hyper focus on the aesthetics of subcultures instead of participating in community activities because of growing up on the internet / social media. We see the same thing happening to other subcultures like goth. And this is not a negative judgement of Gen Z, just an observation I think is worth mentioning.

As a baby gal or gaijin gal, you do not have to compete with Japanese gals or try harder to be able to stand next to them. Again I'm not sure why you would even need or want to do that. There is no prize or cookie you get from being approved by people on the internet / "gyaru enough". If you're going to be a gal, have fun and enjoy it! Don't worry about proving yourself to people who you'll likely never meet. Gyaru is not a static style; it has evolved many times since its inception and will continue to do so. There are no hard and fast rules.