Before Instagram and Twitter (I'm not calling it X) became the social media titans they are today, there was blogging. Jorn Barger coined the term "weblog" in 1997, and Peter Morholz abridged it to "blog" two years later. The platform Blogger (on which this post is hosted! Hi, queen!) was founded in 1999, and Livejournal and Xanga followed. The rest is history. From mommy bloggers to Lord of the Rings slash fic, there's a blog on just about every topic. Gyaru is no exception.
In the 2000s, there was a gyaru blogging boom; by 2010, being a popular gal blogger had become a status symbol. Yunokoro and Okarie were two of the most well-known gal bloggers, focusing on beauty and fashion with themselves as the main subjects. They considered themselves "ordinary girls" who rose to prominence through blogging, turning their dreams into reality with just a camera phone. They likened it to a Cinderella story.
But how'd they do it? Honestly, gyaru blogging doesn't differ much from other lifestyle blogging. It's essentially a digital diary. Well, one that anyone can read. Of course, blogging is a legitimate career these days. If you Google "how to be a lifestyle blogger," you'll find a plethora of step-by-step tutorials that teach you how to make money and "maximize SEO." During the heyday of gyaru bloggers, no one imagined that blogging might lead to prominence. It began as a hobby.
At the risk of sounding very "old-man-yells-at-cloud," I miss the earnestness of creating for the pure love of it rather than as a "side hustle." Don't get me wrong: I don't think there's anything immoral in making money from your work, but it always leaves a bad taste in my mouth when I come across a blogger whose primary purpose is to profit, and the actual content is just a means to that end. It's a capitalist nightmare. I've even stumbled upon blogs on gyaru and J-fashion loaded with obnoxious banner ads, affiliate links for over-priced dropshipping stores, and posts that read suspiciously like they were authored by A.I.
Let's get back to the subject at hand. What is gyaru (gal) blogging? Just as a 'girl blogger' is a girl who blogs about being a girl, a gyaru blogger is a blogger who blogs about being a gyaru. In the 2020s, gal blogging looks different than it did at its Y2K peak. A significant part of this is due to the fact that our relationships with blogging have evolved, as have the platforms and methods we use to communicate online.
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| My Room by Michelle on Flickr, taken 2008 |
Back in Yunokoro and Okarie's zenith, the ideal gyaru blogger was thin, doe-eyed with dolly circle lenses that made her look like a living Purikura filter, had thick and immaculately groomed hair, wore Liz Lisa, and read Popteen. They blogged about fashion and beauty, posted charmingly low-quality selfies courtesy of their flip phone or Gen 1 iPhone cameras, offered product suggestions to brighten skin, and showcased their latest manicure.
There are fewer gyarus now and fewer bloggers. As a consequence, there are fewer gyaru bloggers. I'd venture a guess that many gal bloggers nowadays do it because it's so closely tied to 2010's gyaru culture, rather than because they genuinely believe it's the superior form of digital communication. It's a combination of nostalgia and feeling like it's something you "ought to do" to be a practicing gyaru, not dissimilar from Para Para or coveting the iconic Alba Rosa blanket coat or DIA chain belt. This isn't a judgment. I love blogging as a gyaru. I own a DIA belt. I want an Alba Rosa blanket coat. (Edit: I got an Alba Rosa coat.)
That said, I don't think I'm good at blogging. I, too, wanted to follow in the footsteps of my gyaru foremothers and maintain a daily blog. (You can see proof of this in my failed 2024 gyaru goals post). While I love reading a post about the simple niceties of someone's everyday life, I don't find any fulfillment in sharing the simple niceties of mine. I can't pinpoint why.
And yet...
I occasionally have these fleeting thoughts about becoming a gyaru influencer despite the fact that influencing hasn't ever been anything I was remotely interested in. I'm obsessed with beauty (sometimes it feels like it's against my will), albeit via the hyper-specified lens of gyaru. I'm sure this is true for other gyaru. Why else would we all be spending so much time blogging about it?
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| A still from The Substance trailer, a film about the obsession with youth and beauty, 2024 |
The gaijin gal community is run on the exchange of advice on how to appear more gyaru and the reprising of the same questions (can I be [this] and still be gyaru? Can I do [this] and still be gyaru?) Perhaps it's in a genuine bid to feel part of the coterie or to have the answers spoon-fed to the askers in easy-to-digest chunks. We police each other and ourselves. That's sort of par for the course in any subculture where, whether we like it or not, some level of gatekeeping is required. Unlike the inexcusable gatekeeping of information (information wants to be free), it's an attempt to preserve the uniqueness of a subculture and ensure it remains founded on its core principles. For example, you cannot be a fascist and a punk. They are diametrically opposed.
Do we blog because we want to be watched and admired? It would be naive to suggest that this wasn't at least some part of why we do it. Without looking very hard at all, you'll see modern-day gyaru posting makeup tutorials and OOTD's to no public reception or "likes." I post these essays without knowing if anyone will read them. When you think about it, it's hard to claim that we blog just to be adored, but the potential for adoration is a potent motivator. It keeps us going. And so we blog like we have an audience... even when we don't.
Art critic John Berger said, "women are always watching themselves being watched." Author Margaret Atwood said, "You are your own voyeur." In the case of the gal blogger, we shape our lives into a sort of historical fiction, repackaging them to fit our aesthetics and substyles, thereby producing a personal simulacrum. We vie to exist in a world where people genuinely want to hear about what we're wearing or what eyeshadow we use to shade our droops. As a gal blogger, it's not that we want "people" to be captivated by our content; we want other gyaru. We want acceptance from our chosen in-group.
During the late 2000s and early 2010s, the most popular YouTubers were those that we all considered "relatable." Relatable, relatable, relatable—it was a word thrown around a lot at the time. It was frequently used in conjunction with the term "authentic," though I doubt anyone who used it to describe a YouTuber knew what they actually wanted to say, which was that this individual seemed like someone they'd be friends with in 'real life.' Emphasis on seemed. This was before the term "parasocial relationship" entered the public consciousness and well before the concept of an Internet celebrity was established. What we saw was a girl posting makeup tutorials from her bedroom. It was much easier for us to envision being or knowing her than it was, say, Vanessa Hudgens or Paris Hilton, whose "barriers to entry" (that is, imagining what it would be like to be them) were far higher.
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| From Jon Rafman's series 'You Are Standing In An Open Field,' 2019 |
But now, anyone can be a star. Many internet-born celebrities have surpassed their "famous-by-traditional-means" contemporaries in fame and recognizability. Even the everyday person has been conditioned to sell themselves on their private platforms, meticulously curating their Instagram feeds and considering (with all the seriousness of a professional marketing consultant) what their personal "brand" is. The superficiality was there from the beginning, rewarded and reinforced by the algorithms that decide whether your post will be seen. Or not. It's no surprise that we ended up here. It was by design. The Internet loves to wash us out.
There's apparently another resurgence of the "relatable" influencer or at least our desire for it. It's being called the 'genuinfluencer.' (That word gave me the ick.) According to Evy Lyons, VP of marketing at Tracckr, "Genuinflencers are less interested in promoting products and more interested in spreading ideas and truth." I'll believe it when I see it.
One thing's for sure: shit's weird. I remember a time when having 1 million followers meant you had hit it big, but now that's nothing. It's confetti. It almost feels like if everyone's famous, then no one's famous. The market is oversaturated.
If it wasn't already obvious, I don't believe it's possible to be truly relatable or authentic or a genui-whatever-the-fuck-fluencer online. Whenever we post something, there's always an element of performance. Of copyediting and revision and intention and bias and agenda. I don't think that's inherently bad, so long as there's transparency involved.
So, at the end of it all... What does it mean to be a gal blogger? Well, it's when a gal blogs. And that's that on that.
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