What Happened to Gyaru?

It feels almost quaint, in 2025, to talk about gyaru as a "living" subculture. Yes, there once was a time when gyaru was something alive and complex: a youth culture driven by aesthetics and fun-seeking, informed by popular Tokyo trends as much as by any urge to push back against Japan's social and beauty norms. It wasn’t a political rebellion (most gyaru abandoned the style by their mid-twenties, slipping back into conventional respectability), but for a brief moment, it offered a flashy, unruly alternative to what was expected of young women. 

Somewhere along the way, though, what was once a loud, oftentimes gaudy playground for young women (more about chasing trends and nightlife than any radical feminist agenda) was flattened into a marketable costume. Today’s mainstream gyaru is polished, influencer-friendly, and far removed from the chaotic scenes of girls who once embraced the style simply because they loved how it looked, spending hours and paychecks to go out with their friends, rather than building an online cult of personality.

It’s an inflammatory claim, but I’ll make it: gyaru, as we knew it, is dead. Not in the literal sense; there are still girls who bleach their hair, tan their skin, and pile on lashes. But culturally, gyaru functions more like Heisei cosplay these days, a retro aesthetic Japan (and Western devotees of Japanese fashion) resurrect to sell nostalgia, divorced from the nuanced realities that once surrounded it. The most visible faces of gyaru now are influencers, “talents,” and models who perform an algorithm-friendly version of the style.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in Japan itself, the birthplace of gyaru. Shibuya (once the heart of gyaru) is now home to a so-called “gyaru school,” where teenagers pay to learn how to market themselves. They slip into kawaii seifuku, practice applying makeup, taking selfies from the best angles, and study the basics of social media strategy. It’s easy to be cynical about it, especially when the promise of becoming an “influencer” is packaged as an aspirational end goal. However, it’s not entirely bleak: the school also offers English and Korean conversation lessons. And in a world that increasingly runs on content, learning to edit and build a personal brand can open real doors. Still, there’s something disheartening in seeing gyaru (once a style worn out in public for the sheer joy of it) reshaped into a formal training ground for influencer culture.

I have to ask: is this all that gyaru is now? A gimmick to set you apart on social media? A training ground for future influencers? The short answer is yes, at least in the mainstream, at least online. Gyaru has largely been reduced to a set of visual signifiers, optimized for TikTok’s discover page and Instagram’s explore algorithm. It’s a look you can buy, a persona you can take on and off. The reckless energy that once defined it, the cliques that loitered around Shibuya 109, the at-home bleach jobs that left hair feeling like straw, the money spent on sunbeds and tanning lotions, the cheap plastic accessories stacked high because more was always more, has been replaced by a commercial pipeline that prioritizes online attention over everything else.

Subcultures have always risked this fate. Dick Hebdige (a near fixture around here, given how often I bring him up) wrote decades ago about how subversive style inevitably gets stripped of meaning and repackaged for mass consumption. Fashion is an industry, after all. Someone always profits from outsider aesthetics. But there’s something uniquely hollow about the current incarnation of gyaru. It’s become content. Its chaotic vitality now competes (and loses) with the cold logic of platform capitalism.

You can see it everywhere: from thoughtful YouTubers trying to maintain integrity to someone like MrBeast, who’s turned the platform into a hyper-optimized spectacle machine. I don’t doubt he genuinely loves making videos. That doesn’t make his content any less soulless. It’s just how these systems work: they reward whatever keeps people watching, clicking, and sharing. So, of course, the edges of whatever you’re doing start to smooth out or exaggerate in ways that fit the platform’s demands. It’s simply the tradeoff when you build a version of yourself meant to be consumed.

This is something I’ve written about before: how platforms like TikTok and Instagram are structurally hostile to real subculture. They reward trends that are easy to replicate and sell. They flatten complexity, favoring reproducibility over authenticity. A true subculture doesn’t fit neatly into short-form video or a Twitter (X) thread. If anything, it resists being packaged at all.

Does that mean gyaru is gone completely? Not exactly. It exists now in much the same way it always truly did: within the people who really fucking love it. That might sound crass, but it’s true. And to be clear, I’m not pretending that even the most devoted gyaru (past or present) weren’t also hungry for attention or validation. They absolutely were. But there’s a fundamental difference between chasing that attention on the streets, risking confusion or ridicule from people who don’t get it, and performing for an online audience that’s already primed to approve. The gyaru who are still out there today might be seeking eyes, just like their predecessors, but now, your look doesn’t have to stand up to strangers on the sidewalk. You can craft it for a curated niche, post it, and never have to step outside at all.

Real gyaru (the kind that still has teeth) doesn’t live in curated feeds. It survives in the personal thrill of putting it all on because it looks cool and you love it, in wanting to be gyaru for the sake of gyaru itself. 

So few gals these days are gal purely for the love of it, which is exactly why gyaru feels so watered down. Not because making money off it is inherently unethical, but because it comes at a cost. The moment you monetize your gyaru identity, it divides in two: one that’s personal, and one that exists to meet financial and platform demands. And once you start garnering a bit of money or attention, the commercial side almost always takes precedence. That’s simply the nature of turning something into a job: it stops being driven purely by personal passion and becomes accountable to metrics, audiences, and algorithms. Your decisions start to hinge on what generates income or visibility, not just what you genuinely want to do. It doesn’t mean you stop caring about gyaru, but it does mean your relationship to it fundamentally changes.

Of course, not everyone who monetizes or chases attention is some cartoon sellout. Plenty just adapt because it’s what keeps them visible, relevant, or rewarded by the platforms they’re on. But it’s still a shift worth recognizing: once your identity as a gyaru becomes tied to online validation (whether through likes, followers, or brand deals), the way you engage with it inevitably changes. That’s the real tragedy, not that people want to be seen, but that this is what being seen demands.

Since gyaru is, for all practical purposes, dead as a street culture, most people now learn about it online. Historically, gyaru was transmitted through embodied, co-present interactions. The subcultural codes were largely cultivated on-site, learned through immersion in spaces where social meaning was constructed collectively and reinforced through direct, in-person experiences. 

The rise of what sociologist Frank Furedi calls “bedroom culture” has only accelerated this shift. Where gyaru was once inherently public, it can now be performed entirely within the confines of a private room. Media technology has enabled a hyper-personalized practice of gyaru, one that doesn’t require stepping outside or risking the judgment of strangers. On the surface, this might seem empowering: everyone is free to interpret the style however they wish. But pushed to its logical extreme, this relentless personalization fosters a kind of hostile individualism. Any suggestion of shared standards or communal aesthetics is treated as an imposition. You see it clearly in the unwillingness of some to learn the technical foundations of gyaru makeup. They’d rather “do it their way,” and expect the broader community to simply accept it. That might be harmless if it stayed private, but of course, it doesn’t. It’s broadcast online, framed as gyaru, and defended fiercely against critique. In this way, bedroom culture hasn’t just privatized the practice of gyaru; it’s fragmented its collective meaning, turning a once socially negotiated style into a series of solitary declarations, each demanding recognition on its own uncompromising terms.

These solitary declarations don’t exist in a vacuum; they circulate through digital channels. Tutorials, coordinates, even the social rules of gyaru are mediated by platforms that favor clear, replicable content. This has produced an entirely new vocabulary for what it means to be gyaru, one shaped by the influencer economy. It’s almost as if today’s gyaru and the gyaru of the past aren’t even speaking the same language anymore. Perhaps that’s why so many veterans have quietly stepped back. Even if they still consider themselves gyaru, they no longer engage with the community in the same way, because the community they knew has effectively vanished. And how can you participate fully when the very terms of belonging (the cultural codes, references, shared understandings) have been rewritten into something almost unintelligible? 

Why is everything so fucking boring now?


Once upon a time in Internet land, the World Wide Web felt like a space for discovery: unrefined, unpredictable, and uniquely personal. Subculture thrived in weird little corners of the web, often difficult to access unless you knew precisely where to look. These spaces mimicked the spirit of real-world underground movements, imperfect and often resistant to mainstream assimilation. But that dynamic has shifted, not simply because of the prominence of algorithmic platforms, but because those platforms are designed with purpose: to extract profit from predictability. 

The problem isn’t algorithms in the abstract. It’s the fact that they are engineered to benefit advertisers and tech billionaires, certainly not artists, users, and cultural innovators. The architecture of these platforms optimizes for engagement, and engagement favors the extreme, the statistically safe, the easily categorized. What we see online is not a mirror of creativity or desire, but a reflection of what is most easily digested and monetized. The result is a cultural landscape that feels increasingly flat, overproduced, and boring. 

This is coming from someone neck-deep in it. Today, as I scroll through Instagram, I’m met with a monotonous parade of hyper-curated content that masquerades as alternative (or “alt”) culture. Aesthetic diversity has been sanded down into a commodified spectacle, optimized for mass consumption. I keep scrolling as if I’ll stumble upon something radical or cool, strange or arresting, even though I know better than that. It’s not happening. It’s all more or less the same. 


This phenomenon is especially evident in the rise of what might, for convenience, be called “Instagram Alt”–– a version of alternative fashion that prioritizes palatability over expressive honesty. Despite the apparent celebration of non-mainstream styles, the same facial features and body types dominate the Discover page. This homogeneity is not incidental. It is the product of a larger system that rewards aesthetic legibility and conformity under the guise of diversity. 


To be clear, this is not a critique of individual creators, nor a moral indictment of those who participate in these spaces. I am one. Rather, it is a structural critique of the platforms that mediate our aesthetic experiences. The question is not what people choose to create, but what gets seen and rewarded. In the age of platform capitalism, visibility is shaped less by personal expression and more by algorithmic design. 


Social media platforms like TikTok and Instagram are not neutral stages; they are commercial infrastructures governed by engagement metrics and machine learning algorithms. As Zuboff (2019) outlines in The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, these platforms commodify human attention, shaping user behavior in ways that prioritize predictability and, thus, profitability. The algorithm’s preference for specific facial geometries, editing styles, and visual tropes means that even “subversive” content must be aesthetically palatable to achieve visibility. 


Take, for instance, the case of yabi gyaru, a contemporary Chinese interpretation of the Japanese gyaru subculture. The term “yabi” is a compound word that translates to “subcultural cunt,” and refers to a bold and indulgently maximalist aestheitc. At first glance, yabi gyaru appears to celebrate the audacity and expressiveness of its predecessor. However, upon closer inspection, the aesthetic variance collapses: the same homogenized facial features, skinny bodies, and styling choices result in content that feels not like a revival or a continuation, but more like an Instagram performance. This isn’t a jab at yabi itself, which contains a rich visual language, but at the narrow and Instagram-approved version of yabi gyaru that dominates the digital zeitgeist. What we are seeing is not the full spectrum of the style; it’s the part most aligned with dominant beauty standards and therefore most likely to be shared. 


Even traditional Japanese gyaru substyles, such as tsuyome, are being retrofitted to suit contemporary digital tastes. I recently came across an image of a 2010s-era tsuyome gyaru whose face had been digitally Frankensteined to resemble the Western “Instagram baddie” archetype: smooth, symmetrical, and stripped of the very roughness that once defined the style. The edit was widely shared, reinforcing a feedback loop wherein deviation must still conform to dominant beauty standards to gain traction. Even those doing subculture “correctly” are evidently not doing it correctly enough, according to social media. 


What happens to counterculture when its dissemination is governed by systems designed to eliminate unpredictability? What we’re witnessing is not the organic rise of new movements or the honest continuation of pre-established ones, but the mass production of simulated difference. Content engineered to appear edgy while remaining within cushy and comfortable boundaries. Genuine subversion cannot survive in environments that flatten expression into what Sarah Thornton (1995) termed “subcultural capital,” a form of stylized distinction that ultimately relies on the dominant order rather than resisting it. Hebdige (1979) similarly warned of the recuperation of subcultural signs, whereby resistance is absorbed into the mainstream and stripped of its political charge. 


There is a deep disappointment in realizing that while boundary-pushing creators still exist (and will exist forever), their work remains largely invisible beneath layers of algorithmically preferred sameness. If they’re even posted to these platforms at all because, of course, why should they rely on spaces that do not serve them and never did? On platforms like Instagram, fashion and subculture become content, and every image becomes a catalog. Novelty, speed, and conventional beauty reign supreme. There is little room for experimentation or eccentricity because those things are not the goal and never were.


In this context, platforms themselves become architects of culture, privileging the familiar over the experimental. As Baudrillard (1981) might suggest, we inhabit a “hyperreality” in which representations of subculture replace their original referents. We consume simulations of alternative aesthetics that are easier to digest, share, and monetize, while the disruptive potential of subculture is neutralized or hidden behind a metaphorical curtain.


It’s what's in our digital diet. We are fed the same things over and over again, sometimes seasoned with a veneer of something “new,” but not really. It doesn’t shock, challenge, or upset. It simply performs difference while reinforcing the same aesthetic values that have always been socially acceptable and encouraged. After a while, our ability to imagine something beyond the machine starts to fade.


We spend so much time living online that the borders between digital life and embodied reality are blurred. The internet used to be a destination we visited and returned from. Now, it is the space in which we live. Our phones are not just tools; they are extensions of our hands, our eyes, our identities. And the more time we spend there, the more likely we are to internalize the aesthetic logic of these platforms as a reflection of the world itself. We begin to see algorithmic beauty as objective beauty. What gets liked becomes what gets desired.


Coined by writer Jia Tolentino, “Instagram Face” describes a specific, surgically achievable aesthetic that dominates social media: smooth skin, symmetrical features, plump lips, catlike eyes, and a racially ambiguous yet predominantly Eurocentric look. As more and more people filter themselves through this aesthetic, digitally or physically, we begin to see real-world beauty standards mutate in its image. This is not just imitation; it’s transformation. We begin to desire the face we are constantly shown, and in turn, we produce content that reflects it. We feed it; we become it. This is the algorithm’s most insidious effect: not just flattening expression, but reshaping desire itself. 

Subculture and alt aesthetics in the Internet Age are less about subversiveness and more about identity. They function like a character selection screen: pick your appearance, assign your traits, and join the fray. It’s not about pushing boundaries, but signaling belonging. The purpose isn’t to rebel. It’s to fit in with the right kind (or your preferred kind) of different. In a world where your online presence is your resume, your brand, and your social capital, subcultural style becomes a skin you can wear to stand out just enough, while still keeping one foot planted safely in the zone of acceptability. 

And so we arrive at a central tension: can true innovation and true alternative expression exist on platforms that demand sameness in exchange for visibility? Can formally subversive subcultures survive in spaces owned and designed by capital, where every interaction is mined for data, and every expression is either monetizable or invisible? I would argue it cannot, not in any lasting or radical form. Because the internet we occupy is not neutral ground; it is a commercial infrastructure designed to promote what sells, what spreads, and what sustains the system. 


True alternative culture requires friction. It requires resistance. But friction slows engagement, and resistance threatens stability; two things the algorithm cannot allow. So even our “rebellion” becomes optimized: a miming of chaos, but not truly disruptive; interesting, but not unsettling; different, but not too different. What we’re left with is a pantomime of innovation, alternative in style, but not in substance. 

As Caroline Busta writes in her piece The internet didn’t kill counterculture—you just won’t find it on Instagram: “To be truly countercultural today, in a time of tech hegemony, one has to, above all, betray the platform.” This betrayal doesn’t just mean abandoning social media; it means divesting from the performative self that exists to feed the beast. Subculture that survives the algorithm must do so outside its reach, perhaps pseudonymously, perhaps in encrypted corners, or perhaps not online at all. 

If true subversiveness is to exist, it is not going to be found on Instagram. The dark forest theory of the internet, as adapted from Liu Cixin’s science fiction of the same name and expanded upon by Busta, imagines a digital world in which users retreat from constant visibility in favor of partial obscurity, where community and creativity are cultivated in shadows. In these dim corners, culture is not flattened. It grows like mushrooms in the dark. 

The flattening we’re experiencing isn’t just aesthetic. It's mental. It erodes the muscle memory of rebellion, of eccentricity, of the ugly, the beautiful, and the strange. And maybe that’s the real disappointment of it all: not that it changes what we see, but that it changes what we want to see. And eventually, what we can even fathom at all.

I wrote this because I was bored to the point of despair. It made me want to scream. Not just at the content, but at myself for looking. I found myself craving disruption: something strange, or ugly, or alive enough to cut through the haze. Instead, I now sit with a more personal fear: not just that I have nothing of value to offer, but that whatever I do have (whatever I create or express) is neither subversive enough to matter nor conventional enough to be popular. What does it mean to create under these conditions? I long to be free of this fear entirely: free from optimization, from the attention economy, from the hollow logic of platform performance. I simply want to feel new things. 

Like many others, I’m searching for a medium of expression that resists extraction, for something meaningful that isn’t quietly angling to sell you something. And I have to believe it’s out there. Perhaps it’s just not in the places we’re taught to look.

My Loala Gyaru Makeover Experience Wasn’t What I Hoped It Would Be


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I paid for a gyaru makeover in Shibuya, hoping to connect with the subculture I love. What I got was something far more complicated. An experience that raised difficult questions about cultural identity, empathy, and what it means to participate in a foreign fashion community.

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The Makeover

I want to start by saying this isn’t a service review. It’s not about assigning blame or even focusing on a single interaction. This is a personal account of an experience that left me feeling uneasy, and that unease opened the door to larger questions about subculture, identity, and cultural translation. I’ll explore those questions later. For now, I would like to share the experience as it happened. 

There used to be a semi-well-known ganguro café in Tokyo. You’d go, order a tropical cocktail and some takoyaki, and one of the gal waitstaff would give you a gyaru makeover. Before I moved to Japan, I really wanted to go. Unfortunately, the café closed before I ever had the chance.

I assumed that these kinds of “gyaru experiences” had all but disappeared from Tokyo, but with a bit of research, I discovered that wasn’t entirely true.

Loala is a fashion magazine distributed at tanning salons in Japan. It launched in June 2022 and features several well-known gyaru models, including some former members of Black Diamond. To my surprise, Loala currently offers a gyaru makeover package: you visit their studio in Shibuya, get your makeup done, try on gyaru clothing, and head to a nearby purikura booth to take photos. The total cost for the experience is 15,000 yen (about $100 USD).

I was ecstatic when I discovered the makeovers. At the time, I had been feeling somewhat disconnected from the gyaru community. While I still enjoyed doing gyaru on my own, I didn’t feel particularly connected to others who shared my interest. I thought this experience might be a chance to feel that connection again. I also hoped that getting advice or feedback from a veteran gal might give me some direction.

I understood going in that this was a transactional experience. I wasn’t expecting true friendship, but I hoped that beyond the basic service, there might be a moment of connection, some shared enthusiasm, or even a brief exchange that felt genuinely mutual. This was my want. It wasn’t promised. But it felt reasonable (to me, at least), given the considerable time and care I had put into studying and participating in the culture.

I arrived at the designated time and was welcomed into the studio. I wasn’t alone. Another participant, a Hong Kong influencer, was there to vlog her experience. The space was decorated with a fuzzy pink rug, a television looping Loala music videos, and two low vanities for makeup.

The studio

The first of the Loala models arrived a few minutes late. The other was even later. Both were polite, as I expected. As someone who has lived in Tokyo for over a year, I’ve come to recognize Japanese customer service as consistently gracious and professional.

The model who began doing my makeup was a former Black Diamond member, which I found genuinely exciting. I told her about my love for old-school gyaru, my Alba Rosa collection, and my stash of vintage Egg magazines. I even brought my copy of Ganguro Girls to share with her. With that, the makeover began.

She pulled out an extremely dark foundation. In hindsight, I wish I had spoken up more firmly from the beginning. I mentioned that I was concerned it might look like blackface on my fair skin. She responded by saying that this was a part of Japanese identity and culture, not blackface.

At that point, I should have realized we were operating with two entirely different understandings of race, aesthetics, and how makeup is perceived on different features. I didn’t have the language or confidence to bridge that gap at the time.

I let her proceed. She applied makeup in the style of Buriteri, who famously used foundation intended for Black women to create her look. I naively (and delusionally, honestly) assumed the foundation would be blended out, or softened with concealer. It wasn’t.

When I saw myself in the mirror, it was immediately clear that I should’ve said something sooner. On my white features, the effect read unmistakably as blackface. Regardless of the intent, that was the visual impact.

I asked if she could remove the foundation. By then, we were communicating through a translation app. My Japanese is conversational at best, and I wasn’t equipped to navigate something this complex in the moment. I could tell she wasn’t thrilled about my request, but she agreed. She removed the foundation with a wet wipe, which left my face uneven and muddy. It wasn’t corrected. I suspect timing was a factor. I had paid for a two-hour experience, and that time was running out. In fairness, I should’ve spoken up earlier.

The finished makeup

Afterward, she handed me an Alba Rosa dress and led me and the influencer to a nearby purikura booth. I tried to hide my face behind the blonde wig they gave me and hoped to finish quickly. The intense purikura filters softened the appearance of the makeup, but it all left an acidic feeling in my stomach, so I discarded the photos when I got home.

The purikura

We returned to the studio, removed the makeup and outfits, and I left as soon as I could.

As for the models themselves, I want to be clear: they were not rude. They were polite and professional (aside from their tardiness), and they fulfilled the service as advertised. They weren’t obligated to be anything more than that. But I had come in hoping for something beyond the transaction: conversation, connection, a sense of shared enthusiasm. And that set me up for disappointment.

These girls didn’t care about me or my personal investment in the subculture. They were doing a job. While I left feeling something close to a gyaru ego death, I’m sure they won’t remember me. And that’s not their fault.

Something in me gave way. A kind of internal confidence I had built over time, a sense of belonging I had cautiously nurtured, suddenly felt fragile. Maybe even nonexistent. 

What it comes down to is a gap in expectation. I came looking for community and direction (not unreasonably, I think), but the event just wasn’t built for that.

Cultural Empathy and Misunderstanding

There’s a difference between participating in something as a member of the culture that created it and participating as someone outside that culture. I’ve been a gyaru for almost two years, and I’ve spent countless hours studying it and immersing myself in its history and aesthetics. But I’m a foreign gyaru. I wasn’t raised in Japan, and I didn’t experience gyaru as it originally emerged. My engagement is real, but it’s shaped by a different cultural lens. That doesn’t make it inauthentic, just different.

What’s fascinating about gyaru is that it’s always been in conversation with the West. From the beginning, gyaru drew heavily from Western fashion trends (tanned skin, bleached hair, surf and club aesthetics), but transmuted them into something uniquely Japanese. It’s a subculture built on reinterpretation, on translation, on making something foreign feel like one’s own. And for those of us outside Japan trying to connect with it, that process of translation continues, but in reverse. We’re interpreting an interpretation, and trying to participate in something that was never designed with us in mind.

When the model told me the makeup was “part of Japanese identity and culture,” I understood that she wasn’t trying to be dismissive. She was expressing something real, something I didn’t (and maybe couldn’t) fully grasp. Gyaru, and especially ganguro, emerged in a very specific cultural context: a reaction to mainstream beauty standards, a celebration of excess, and in some cases, a flirtation with taboo. But none of that erases how it might look (or feel) when performed on a non-Japanese body, particularly a white one.

In this specific situation, it was my white American face wearing the makeup, and that carries a different set of cultural connotations. While a darker foundation shade may not register as racially insensitive on a Japanese face to the same degree, it absolutely will on someone like me. That doesn’t mean it’s never viewed as problematic in Japan (because it can be, and sometimes is), but it’s far less likely to be questioned or acknowledged on a broad scale. Japan is a highly insular culture, and when something is seen as a local aesthetic choice, there is very little internal pressure to examine or challenge it. In contrast, in the United States, public discourse and community accountability around race, especially when it comes to representations of Blackness, are more active and expected. What might pass unnoticed in Japan can carry a very different weight when seen on a Western face. The visual impact simply doesn’t translate cleanly across cultures.

"There’s a difference between participating in something as a member of the culture that created it and participating as someone outside that culture."

Part of what complicates this even further is that Japan doesn’t share the same historical relationship to race that Western countries do. There is no long-standing national history of blackface in Japan, and no parallel legacy of racial violence toward Black people in the same way as in the U.S. or Europe. So the symbols and aesthetics that feel loaded (painful, even) to someone from the West may not carry the same cultural weight for someone raised in Japan. That doesn’t make them innocent or harmless, but it does help explain why such a disconnect can occur.

That’s the uncomfortable space I found myself in. I wasn’t being intentionally harmed or disrespected. But I also wasn’t being heard. My discomfort didn’t fit into the script, and I didn’t have the language or cultural footing to challenge it on the spot. Instead, we both carried on, with a growing gap between us. A gap filled with everything we didn’t or couldn’t say.

Empathy is often framed as a soft skill, something gentle and affirming. But real empathy requires friction. It requires work. It asks us to question our assumptions and pause before defending our intent.

I tried to do that. I explained to her that I understood what she meant, that I wasn’t accusing her of blackface, that I knew this look came from a very specific Japanese context. I even spoke with my Japanese friends and boyfriend afterward to better understand how this type of makeup is perceived here. I expressed, both then and now, that I understood where she was coming from.

But part of my pain comes from the fact that I didn’t feel that the same courtesy was extended to me.

Of course, she didn’t have to. We were strangers. This was a transactional interaction. But it would’ve meant a lot. It would’ve made me feel like I wasn’t just an easy way to make money, but a person she was willing to try and understand.

It’s also important to acknowledge that by this point, we were using a translation app to communicate. That’s no small thing. A lot of nuance (emotion, intent, vulnerability) may have been lost in that digital space between us. The very tools we relied on to understand each other may have helped obscure the heart of what we were both trying to say.

So maybe this was never really about one person failing to empathize with another. Perhaps it was about the limits of empathy when two people communicate through layers of language, culture, history, and screens. Still, it hurt. And it still does.

Reality vs. Expectation in Subculture

Online, subculture often feels accessible, even intimate. You find people who share your interests, exchange knowledge, swap photos, and build a sense of belonging through shared language and aesthetics. That was my entry point into gyaru. Through forums, scans, and social media, I built a vision of what gyaru was, and what it could be for someone like me.

But reality is rarely as romantic as the version we construct in our heads. When I finally had the chance to interact with gyaru in a more “official” or in-person capacity, it felt strangely hollow. Not fake, not hostile, just indifferent. What had felt vibrant and communal online now felt quiet and transactional.

After the Loala experience, I talked to my boyfriend about it. He’s 28 now, so he wasn’t a teenager during the height of old-school gyaru, but he was growing up in Tokyo while it was happening. He saw it in real time. I asked him what he remembered, and he told me (gently but directly) that sometimes, gyaru really was just vacant and vain. Not always, of course. Not everyone. But that was how it often came across to him and his peers. It was a trend. It was a phase. That was his reality.

"...subculture is not always a collective: it can be fragmented, business-oriented, or even ambivalent."

It was jarring to hear that, because the gyaru I chase (the gyaru many gaijin gyaru celebrate) is something else entirely. Something bigger. More purposeful. Almost sacred. I think we have to be honest about the fact that we mythologize gyaru. Not in a malicious or appropriative way, many of us are careful not to fetishize the culture or the people; however, we don’t always discuss the extent to which we project meaning onto it. Meaning that maybe wasn’t ever there to begin with. 

My boyfriend has always been supportive of my interests, but to him, gyaru was just another fashion trend. It came and went. And in a lot of ways, the loudest versions of gyaru that still exist in Japan today are professionalized: models, influencers, YouTubers. People making content or selling products. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it’s different from what I imagined. Different from what I wanted.

Subcultures promise community, but what they actually offer depends on context. Online, I felt like I was participating in something larger than myself. In person, I was reminded that subculture is not always a collective: it can be fragmented, business-oriented, or even ambivalent. That’s not inherently bad, but it does clash with the romanticized versions many of us build, especially from afar.

What I thought would feel like coming home ended up feeling more like showing up to someone else’s party, uninvited and unwanted.

Identity and Authenticity

After the experience, I found myself questioning not just the community, but myself. What does it mean to call yourself gyaru if the people most associated with that identity don’t acknowledge you, or seem entirely indifferent?

I’ve never claimed to be a perfect gyaru. I’ve never aspired to mimic someone else’s version of gal. I approach the style with care, with study, with genuine passion. But none of that guarantees that others will see you as legitimate. And when you’re a foreigner participating in another culture's fashion, there’s always a low-level hum of doubt. Am I participating, or am I just performing?

What complicates this is that I’ve never doubted my sincerity. Gyaru isn’t something I put on for photos; it’s embedded in the way I dress, the aesthetics I’m drawn to, the media I consume. But sincerity is internal. Authenticity, on the other hand, is often determined by others, by whether or not you’re accepted, acknowledged, or understood. And when that recognition is missing, you’re left to wonder what your place in the subculture really is.

Like many gaijin gyaru, I came to the subculture through fragments: magazine scans, old purikura, grainy videos, and untranslated blog posts. These pieces weren’t just informative; they were sacred. I studied them obsessively, building a picture of gyaru from primary sources, filling in the gaps with what I could gather and infer based on what I had learned. 

That reverence can be beautiful; it’s part of what has kept the gaijin gyaru community alive, but it can also distort. We talk often about avoiding fetishization, about not reducing gyaru to aesthetic tropes or commodified versions of Japanese girlhood. But we talk less about how we mythologize it. How we project onto it our longing for meaning, for rebellion, for belonging. We romanticize a past we were never part of, and in doing so, sometimes miss the more complicated, messy truth of what gyaru was and what it has become.

"It shook something in me, not because I felt exposed or unworthy, but because I had placed so much faith in the idea that sincerity would be enough... But subculture doesn’t always work that way. It’s not a system where effort begets belonging."

That day at the studio, I fully understood that I was paying for a service. It was a transactional experience, and I accepted that. But even transactions can carry a degree of care. Like a good haircut—you may be paying for it, but there's still intention behind the work, a quiet hope that you'll leave feeling satisfied. That was the kind of interaction I had envisioned. Not true friendship, of course, but a shared moment of engagement. A sense that my presence and my investment in gyaru meant something. Instead, the entire exchange felt impersonal, mechanical, and devoid of warmth.

If I had come for content, like the Hong Kong influencer beside me, perhaps I wouldn’t have minded. She got what she came for. But I had arrived hoping for something less tangible; I wanted connection. I wanted to learn. I asked questions, genuinely wanting insight, advice, or anything I could apply to my own practice, but the responses were cursory. Nothing I hadn’t already read or heard. Nothing that felt tailored or considered.

And the makeup itself was poorly done. Even before the wet wipe touched my face, the application felt rushed. The eye makeup lacked polish. My blonde lashes weren’t blended into the falsies, leaving the look unfinished and unrefined. There was no real technique, no attention to detail. And by the end of it, I felt similarly handled: processed, rather than styled. 

It shook something in me, not because I felt exposed or unworthy, but because I had placed so much faith in the idea that sincerity would be enough. If I showed up with genuine interest and thoughtful participation, I would find recognition. But subculture doesn’t always work that way. It’s not a system where effort begets belonging.

Sometimes, no matter how much you care or how hard you try, you can still find yourself on the outside.

The Business of Subculture

Subcultures have always walked a fine line between authenticity and commodification, but those grounded in fashion and aesthetics, rather than explicit political ideology, are particularly vulnerable to becoming products. Gyaru, with its visual excess and built-in consumer identity, was never anti-capitalist. It was never underground. From its inception, gyaru was visible, aspirational, and closely tied to consumption: of magazines, trends, and beauty products. In that sense, its commercialization wasn’t a betrayal; it was baked in from the beginning.

However, even within fashion-based subcultures, there is a distinction between dressing the part and selling the image, between living within a style and profiting from it.

The concept of the “business gyaru” isn’t new. Morimoto Yoko, a gyaru icon in her own right, known both as a former Egoist staff member and one of the famous charisma clerks at Shibuya 109 in the 1990s, described herself that way in a 2023 interview with Yomiuri. As an older sister gal, she occupied a central place in the gyaru scene during its golden age. But even then, she said that once her shift ended, she would quietly take off her wig and platform boots, slip out the back of the store, and return home. “I was a business gyaru, I guess,” she said. Gyaru, for her, was both a performance and a job, even at its cultural peak.

That duality still exists, but the balance has shifted. Today, the most visible gyaru figures in Japan are overwhelmingly professionals: models, influencers, bikini idols, or promotional faces for tanning salons and fashion brands. Their social media presence is carefully curated, often sexualized, and almost always monetized. They are not just doing gyaru; they are selling it. And that is, of course, how we as gaijin gyaru even know they exist.

"There was no sense of community, no mutual investment... [the Laola gals] were not there to share gyaru with me. They were there to model it." 

This is the paradox: the only gyaru who remain highly visible are those who have something to promote. That visibility becomes synonymous with legitimacy, and so the image of gyaru that reaches the international community is filtered through the language of branding. What we see is not the girl on the train, the club regular, or the teen rebelling in her small town; we see the bikini model, the influencer, the girl with a product link in her Instagram bio.

In contrast, most gaijin gyaru engage with the subculture in profoundly different ways. We are, by in large, not building careers on it. For many of us, gyaru is unpaid, self-directed labor. It is study, aesthetic obsession, and personal ritual. We comb through old magazines, dissect tutorials, trade tips, and style ourselves for no audience but each other. In that sense, gaijin gyaru often embody the "lifestyle" ideal in a more literal way than the most visible Japanese figures do today.

This is not to suggest that one form of participation is more authentic than another. Professional models are no less "real" for monetizing their image. But the divergence matters. It creates a disconnect between how gyaru is lived privately and how it circulates publicly. And for those of us who came to gyaru through mediated fragments, this gap between what we imagined and what we now see can be jarring.

The Loala experience brought that divide into sharp focus. I wasn’t engaging with a living subculture; I was buying into a service. There was no sense of community, no mutual investment. The girls were polite and professional. But they were not there to share gyaru with me. They were there to model it. 

What I'm Left With... 

I didn’t write this to draw a line in the sand or to declare what gyaru is or isn’t. I wrote it because I had an experience that shook something loose in me. An experience that forced me to reexamine the relationship I’ve built with this subculture and the stories I’ve told myself about it.

There’s no clean moral here. I’m not interested in painting myself as a victim or assigning blame to anyone involved. What happened was a product of many overlapping factors: cultural differences, language barriers, shifting expectations, and the structural realities of how subcultures survive in a hyper-visual, commodified age.

But it mattered. It mattered because it revealed how much I had projected onto gyaru and how much I had hoped it would offer me in return. And it mattered because it reminded me that sincerity isn’t always enough; that care doesn’t always come back to you; that love, even when deeply felt, doesn’t guarantee belonging.

And still, I love gyaru. Maybe differently now. Maybe more cautiously. But that love hasn’t disappeared. It has simply been complicated, toughened by reality, shaped by experience, and, hopefully, made a little more grounded.

What I’m left with isn’t resentment, but a clearer understanding of what it means to love something from the outside. Gyaru was never mine to inherit, but I chose to participate anyway. Not for validation, but because it resonated with something deep within me. That meaning is quieter now, more personal, and maybe more private than before, but it still endures. I carry it with me, not as a fantasy, but as something real.  

“Reading” as Gyaru: Identity, Interpretation, and the Semiotics of Style in the Gyaru Community

“What does it mean to read as gyaru... and who gets to decide?”


What does it mean to “read” as gyaru?

In fashion and subcultural theory, to “read” a style is to recognize its signs and symbols. The visual shorthand that signals membership in a particular group. Gyaru, with its roots in 1990s Shibuya, is a style that has always shouted: dramatic tans, exaggerated makeup, bleached hair, towering platforms. It was not meant to whisper. 

However, when a visual language so closely tied to a specific cultural and racial context is taken beyond its origin, particularly into the hands of non-Japanese participants, the rules of recognition shift. And in that shift, something interesting happens. 

Within the gaijin gyaru community, a noticeable pattern has emerged: to “read” as gyaru, non-Japanese participants often adopt a relatively uniform appearance. This is not a critique. Instead, it’s a reflection of how subcultural belonging relies on being legible and how, for many of us, legibility comes through certain aesthetic choices that are more likely to “translate” across cultural boundaries.

The Semiotics of Style and the Quest for Legibility

Japanese gyaru exists within a specific visual and cultural ecosystem. Within this space, aesthetic cues (such as bleached or dyed hair, deeply tanned skin, and dramatic eye makeup) are read against a shared backdrop of Japanese fashion history, beauty standards, and media tropes. As Dick Hebdige argued in his seminal work, Subculture: The Meaning of Style, subcultural dress functions as a form of visual resistance, but it is always contextual. The meaning of the “sign” depends on who is reading it and where (Hebdige, 1979). 

Within Japan, gyaru emerged as both a visual and cultural response to the rigid norms of femininity, modesty, and conformity. As Yuniya Kawamura notes in Fashioning Japanese Subcultures, Japanese youth subcultures are often driven by consumption and style, but they also express subtle acts of rebellion through aesthetic distinction (Kawamura, 2012). Gyaru’s exaggerated beauty (tans, falsies, nails, and attitude) positioned it as a challenge to conservative standards of appearance and behavior, particularly for young women. 

When these same gyaru markers are interpreted outside of their original ecosystem, particularly on non-Japanese bodies, their meanings can shift, become flattened, or even disappear. A non-Japanese person attempting a softer or more refined gyaru style may not be “read” as gyaru at all, simply because the cultural framework necessary to recognize the look isn’t assumed. In this way, legibility becomes a kind of gatekeeper. If you're not "read" as gyaru, you're often not seen as gyaru, even within the community.

“Legibility becomes a kind of gatekeeper.”

As a result, gaijin gyaru often lean into the most exaggerated, hyper-visible iterations of the style: deep droops, exaggerated bottom lashes, stark contouring, and extreme nose stripes. These have become the visual shorthand for gyaru, especially online. They serve as immediate signals, an almost urgent declaration: this is gyaru. I am gyaru.

Importantly, this isn’t about mimicry or caricature. It’s about the semiotics of belonging. In many ways, this pattern is a response to the pressures of visibility, particularly on platforms like Instagram, TikTok, or Twitter/X, where attention spans are measured in seconds, and subtlety and nuance often fail to register.

Post-2008: The Evolution of Gyaru and the Rise of Shiro Gyaru

This tendency toward visual extremity is particularly interesting given how gyaru itself evolved post-2008. According to Yuka Kubo in The Last Moments of the Ganguro Tribe: A Study of Gyaru Culture, the ganguro subculture, as a visible presence on the streets of Shibuya, largely disappeared after 2008. 

In their wake, gyaru diversified and softened. By the early 2010s, the style had diversified considerably. Shiro gyaru (gyaru who did not tan and embraced paler skin) became increasingly common, especially within softer substyles like himekaji and onee. Makeup began to borrow heavily from mainstream kawaii aesthetics, with pink tones, gradient lips, and more dolly eye shapes gaining popularity (Kubo, 2023). 

Yet within the gaijin gyaru community, the most legible archetypes often fall into two ends of the spectrum: the hyper-exaggerated yamanba/early ganguro-inspired look, or the kawaii-fied, 2010s Liz Lisa-esque interpretation of gyaru. Both offer clear, digestible visual codes. The former leans into the cartoonish, rebellious extremes of gyaru’s early history (though with important limits, such as avoiding the racial implications of blackface that occasionally surfaced in old-school yamanba), while the latter aligns with a more universally palatable version of Japanese femininity, often idealized in export-friendly kawaii culture.

“What’s rewarded is clarity.”

In both cases, what’s rewarded is clarity. The look must be legible not just in photos, but through the filters of global beauty standards, platform algorithms, and the aesthetic expectations of non-Japanese audiences. As Laura Miller writes in Beauty Up, Japanese body aesthetics are deeply tied to sociocultural ideals and performance, and when exported, they are often misread or recontextualized in ways that reshape their original intent (Miller, 2006).

Features, Filters, and the Limits of Translation

Racialized beauty standards also play a significant role in how gyaru aesthetics are interpreted across cultural contexts. Because gyaru was developed by Japanese teenagers and young women in direct response to the expectations of Japanese society, its visual codes (from extreme tans to dyed hair to exaggerated eye makeup) were read within that specific sociocultural framework. These style choices operated as acts of subversion within Japanese norms, often deliberately pushing back against ideals of natural beauty, modesty, or demureness.

As such, the same stylistic markers can carry very different meanings when placed on non-Japanese bodies, especially outside of Japan. A style that once read as rebellious or fashion-forward within Shibuya’s youth culture might be interpreted as cosplay, parody, or aesthetic confusion in a Western context. This is not because non-Japanese participants lack authenticity or effort, but because the “grammar” of visual style is culturally specific. As Roland Barthes noted in Mythologies, signs are not static; they derive their meaning from their social context, and when that context shifts, so too does the meaning (Barthes, 1957).

"The result isn’t a failure of styling, but a failure of legibility within a different visual and cultural system."

In particular, features that align with Japanese beauty standards, such as smaller facial structures, specific eye shapes, or paler skin (in the case of post-ganguro substyles), often shape how successfully a gyaru look is read within Japan. When those same substyles are worn by people with drastically different features, they may not produce the same semiotic effect. The result isn’t a failure of styling, but a failure of legibility within a different visual and cultural system.

This dynamic creates a tension between personal expression and subcultural recognition. For many gaijin gyaru, especially those still developing their style, achieving a look that “reads” as gyaru is an important milestone. It can feel like a form of visual fluency, proof that they understand the codes and can participate authentically. However, over time, this dynamic can unintentionally create an ecosystem in which only certain styles are validated or spotlighted, not because they’re inherently better, but because they’re easier to recognize through the dominant lens of what gyaru is supposed to look like.

This Isn’t a Hot Take

It’s tempting to frame this as a criticism and to say that gaijin gyaru have become too uniform, or that creativity has been lost. But that’s not the argument I want to make. 

Instead, I think it’s more useful to look at this phenomenon as a product of cultural translation. When a subculture crosses borders, especially visually dense ones like gyaru, it’s natural for certain elements to rise to the top: the ones that “read” the clearest. This doesn’t mean other interpretations are less valid, but it does mean they may require more cultural fluency from the viewer to be understood. 

And that’s okay. In fact, it’s expected. 

However, recognizing this dynamic allows us to be more intentional, more open to a broader range of gyaru expressions, even if they don’t immediately “read” the way we’re used to. It invites us to question our own biases about what gyaru should look like, and to remember that subcultures, even visually-driven ones, are ultimately about community, not conformity. 

Conclusion

If we can hold space for both legibility and experimentation, for both the clearly coded and the softly subversive, then the gaijin gyaru community can continue to grow in richness and diversity. Reading as gyaru may still matter, but perhaps we can also learn to read more carefully and more generously.

Gyaru has always been a subculture shaped by context: born from a specific moment in Japanese youth culture, it evolved in conversation with beauty norms, gender roles, and social rebellion. When that subculture crosses borders, its signs don’t vanish; they transform. For gaijin gyaru, navigating that transformation is part of the challenge and part of the beauty. What emerges is not a perfect reproduction of Japanese gyaru, but a translation. And like all translations, it involves negotiation, creativity, and the occasional loss or shift in meaning.

“What emerges is not a perfect reproduction of Japanese gyaru, but a translation.”

Recognizing this doesn't diminish the value of clarity or tradition. There is still something powerful in mastering the visual codes that make gyaru legible, especially for those of us who have studied, practiced, and immersed ourselves in the culture out of deep admiration. However, holding space for other kinds of participation (for those who experiment, adapt, and interpret) means acknowledging that gyaru is not a static costume but a living, evolving style vocabulary.

It enables greater access, greater expression, and ultimately, greater longevity. Gyaru has survived because it has always been a little unruly, a little contradictory, and deeply personal.

Further Reading

  • Hebdige, Subculture: The Meaning of Style (1979)
  • Kawamura, Fashioning Japanese Subcultures (2012)
  • Kubo, The Last Moments of the Ganguro Tribe (2023)
  • Miller, Beauty Up (2006)
  • Barthes, Mythologies (1957)

my so-called (stardew valley) life

I've been playing Stardew Valley for years. I have many fond memories associated with this game, the best of which is playing with my sisters during the summer, often with a hint of sunburn after a long day at the beach. 

I think, like most people (or at least most cozy gamers), I find myself returning to Stardew whenever I'm in need of comfort. There's something so wholesome and warm about it. 

Although I love the convenience of city living, the fantasy of an idyllic small-town life has its merits. Thanks to Concerned Ape, I can live out that dream without ever leaving Tokyo. As famous American philosopher Hannah Montana once said, it truly is the best of both worlds. 

I found this profile maker by Aiza Belle and wanted to share my imagined Stardew Valley life. 

❀ I'm in a book club with Elliot and Penny. When it's my turn to suggest the book for the month, I always pick something freaky or ergodic, and Penny hates it. To be fair, she usually suggests some Booktok romance that I find maddening, so there's equal suffering. We're ~trauma~ bonding. Elliott and I always get into heated discussions about the underlying meanings and nuances of whatever we're reading. These meetings take place once a month on Thursday evenings at the Saloon. 

❀ Every summer morning, I take a dip in the ocean. It's the best thing in the world. Sometimes Haley joins me at the beach, although she doesn't usually swim. Afterwards, we collect shells together.

❀ Saturday nights, Abigail and I play vidya games at her place. Sometimes Sebastian and Sam join us. I love video games, but I'm terrible at them, so I usually lose. We play everything and anything. Tangentially related: I sometimes pop by the Saloon on a Friday night to watch Sam rage-quit Journey of the Prairie King. I'll also play one single game of pool, which I am also terrible at. I'm terrible at a lot of things. 

❀ Once a month (sometimes twice if we're lucky), Emily and I make a pilgrimage to Zuzu City to visit the thrift shops. We are knee-deep in the bins with our gloves and masks on, excavating gems. She's taught me how to sew, so sometimes a follow-up hangout will include us upcycling or tailoring some of our thrift finds. 

❀ Leah was my first proper friend when I moved to the Valley. She'd invite me over to her little cottage for tea, and we'd stay up all night talking about art, the universe, and our place in it. We often go hiking together. 

❀ On warm evenings, Haley and I sit out on the porch together. We talk about the day, our future, our past, and (perhaps most importantly) make each other laugh. Life sounds like this

As you'll see on my profile, I don't have that many hates. And yes, I don't like chocolate cake. I really don't know why. I like chocolate in general, but something about it in cake form doesn't do it for me. 

♡ Loves: Pumpkin pie, Aquamarine, Green tea, Journal scraps (I am nosey lol), Tropical curry
✖  Dislikes: Trash, Slime eggs, Chocolate cake 


I crafted this little collage on Shoplook, which is like Polyvore (but worse)! 

I love the idea of me stomping around town in my yellow wellies and hibiscus hair clip. I would have the nicest tan. 

daily diary: 5/6/25


I am nothing if not an eternal student. (I used to be a dark academia/Donna Tartt devotee so let me have this dramatic opening, okay?)

These days, my most common "fields" of study have been Japanese and Heisei era Jfashion. Fortunately, these two things very often coincide. The other day I bought a book on fashion history at a bookstore in Shibuya. It's entirely written in Japanese with nary a furigana in sight. It's going to take a while to get through and translate, but the time is going to pass anyway. 

This morning, on the last day of my Golden Week break, I set up shop at a nearby kissaten and got to work. 

The book (very straight-forwardly called ストリートファッション / Street Fashion) covers Japanese street fashion from 1980 - 2020. I did consider starting at the beginning, but let's be real, my favorite decade of Jfashion is late 90s - early 2000s so I was eager to get to that part. 

I started by transcribing the first two pages, and then chipped away at the translation. 




As it's only the introduction, I didn't learn anything super groundbreaking. In fairness, this is an area I'm pretty well acquainted with already, so I wasn't surprised. Regardless, it's nice to have more primary sources especially written in the language of origin. 

I'm sure many of you are cringing at the sight of all my hand-written notes. I love writing in my books, always have and always will. I have a couple of friends that are pretty pedantic about the quality of their paperbacks and would never crack a spine. I don't know... I think notes and smudges and wrinkles tell a story about where a book has been, as cliche as that sounds. It's always a joy to me when a secondhand book I've bought has a former reader's notes in the margins. It's like a conversation through time. 

I haven't yet decided what I'm going to do with this information. I'm considering a couple of ideas for more serious posts, albeit once I get through more material. Or it might just stay in my brain. Who knows. 

After a couple hours, I called it quits and made my way back home in the rain. 

I recently got back into playing Stardew Valley so I've been on my farm grind. This is me with my various chickens and ducks, which I have named after different types of noodles. 

The first half of my Golden Week was garbage, but it ended all right. I'm playing a lot of Stardew Valley and dancing around my room. The last three days of the holiday were good. I'm processing a lot of big thoughts and maybe I'll find a decent way to verbalize them. I don't know. We'll see. 

Why I'm Tired of Performing Online (And What That Has to Do with Gyaru)

Galsnap as viewed through the Wayback Machine


I was a middle schooler at a time when phones weren't that smart. Social media was the Wild West. Each discovered platform felt new, a cool and fresh way to express yourself and connect with others. These days, when I compare my memory of social media as an 11-year-old to social media now, the one thing that stands out is how everything has become about buying and being sold. 

My Instagram is almost entirely co-opted by ads. I'll sooner see an ad for some new, drop-shipped kawaii brand on my timeline than I'll see a post from one of my actual friends. And when I do see a post from my friends, they are usually stylized to the point of looking like an editorial in a magazine. I don't think this is a coincidence. 

Long gone are the days of blurry breakfast photos or a funny-faced, too-close snapshot with friends. Everything is so filtered (and I don't mean in sepia or Mayfair) and well-composed. Their outfits looked planned in advance, same with the location. It all has the air of a professional photo shoot, even when it's a post by your buddy who works in finance. 

I remember when this switch was occurring: when we were going from random home-photos to meticulously coordinating the aesthetics of our grid. I thought it was pretty cool at the time. I wanted to take part. But the longer it's gone on, the more I've come to loathe it. It didn't take long for me to identify why it sits so poorly. 

I've boiled it down to two specific reasons: 

1. The everyday person has to transform themselves into a brand. 

2. (and this is a consequence of 1) We are all constantly selling ourselves. 

And for what? To whom?? It makes sense for a company's Instagram to be selling something, but for the average user, what's the objective? Why are we expected to perform the same way? I think this coincides with hustle culture and the idea that we must optimize every single second of our lives and that not a nano-second of it should be wasted on something that doesn't potentially make us money. That last point is particularly funny to me because I think that in spite of this push for "hustling" and "optimization" we do have a tendency to waste a lot of our time doom-scrolling. 

Now everyone’s an influencer. We’re all trying to prove that we’re interesting, worthy, creative. That our output has value.

I'm not a hustler. I am a woman of leisure. I think life is about enjoying it, taking care of each other, and making meaning wherever we can. I'm also under no delusion that I'm some special person whose ideas or art needs to be heard/experienced on a wide scale. That's not to suggest that I think I should stop vocalizing my ideas or making art simply because it's not "the best" or super popular. Far from it. I think the exact opposite. I think it's worth making art even if nobody cares. Even if nobody ever cares. 

If you've made it this far, I'm sure you're wondering how I'm going to connect this to gyaru. If you're one of my friends or have been here a while, then you'll know I can connect anything to gyaru. 

These days, most of the modern gyaru congregate on Twitter (X) and Instagram. I would love to be a bigger part of the community, and have longed for it since I first got into gyaru, but the way that most popular gyaru figures use social media these days is so... off-putting to me. 

This isn’t a critique of any individual gyaru creator, but rather an observation of what it takes to gain visibility on today’s social media platforms. The most popular gyaru (both Japanese and gaijin) tend to converge on a highly specific aesthetic. It’s a polished, consistent version of gyaru that clearly resonates with Gen Z and Gen Alpha audiences. Their success often hinges not just on style, but on strategic posting, branding, and engagement. Many Japanese gyaru today double as bikini models or hostesses, roles long associated with the subculture, but their self-promotion (whether for girls’ bars, club events, or personal brands) feels distinctly shaped by the algorithm-driven internet age. Likewise, prominent gaijin gyaru typically monetize their personas through content creation, music, fashion, or sponsored posts. What results is a kind of homogenization: a gyaru image tailored for maximum reach, visibility, and marketability.

To be clear, I’m not suggesting that any of this is inherently unethical. Sex work and its adjacent industries are legitimate forms of labor and should be safe, respected, and de-stigmatized. Likewise, getting paid for your work (creative, aesthetic, or otherwise) doesn’t diminish its value or authenticity.

What I’m pointing to is the broader shift: gyaru, like so many alternative subcultures, has become a business. When something becomes popular, it becomes sellable. This isn’t so much a critique of the individuals participating in that system as it is of the platforms that incentivize this behavior. Algorithms reward what generates profit, especially for the platforms themselves.

So...where do we go from here? I almost ended this as just a reflection on a modern trend, but I’m honestly exhausted by doomer takes that stop at “Well, what can we even do?” Sure, we may not have the power to overhaul these platforms on our own, but that doesn’t mean we’re powerless.

If you're like me and feel alienated by the way social media functions today, there are really only two choices: opt out completely, or reclaim it on your own terms.

If you’re gyaru (and even if you’re not), post whatever the hell you want. Maybe you already are. Amazing! Keep going. Spam a bunch of pics in a single day, then vanish for a month. Post what you want, when you want. That’s the point. 

It starts with us. 

The motivation shouldn’t be external validation. It should be joy.