What makes adolescent culture go viral, according to podcasts about VSCO girls and the sharing photo-sharing app
VSCO girls are everywhere.
The first time I heard the word "VSCO girl," I was quite convinced it would be a huge thing, but I can't remember where I was or what I was doing. That's not because I'm up on the latest trends in suburban high school fashion, but because it's a clever moniker for a demographic of females that tends to be white and middle-class, and clever moniker for a demographic that tends to go viral. Now, months later, individuals who are at least a decade away from their high school subcultures are exploring and consuming content about those interactions. The VSCO girl, named after the photo-editing program (pronounced "visco"), is only the most recent manifestation of the adult infatuation with teenagers, especially adolescent ladies. What seems new, however, is the glut of VSCO-girl-inspired artwork that has appeared online this year. From the Charlotte Sun Herald to NBC News, you may learn everything about them. Teens provide their own explanations on VSCO girls in Slate. Seventeen and Elle will tell you how to become a VSCO girl, while Fox Business will tell you how much it will cost. You may ponder deeply the meaning of "VSCO girl" on the Cut and the people that the VSCO-girl meme leaves out on BuzzFeed.
One VSCO girl made a 27-year-old feel elderly for the first time, and the New York Times has a story on how the girls of VSCO are affecting the companies they're affiliated with. In CBC, a mother expresses worry that her daughter is becoming a "VSCO girl," while on The Intercept, it is suggested that the VSCO girl is more than simply a fashion statement and is really striking to bring attention to climate change. Perhaps what we're really discussing is just lesbian culture repackaged for the millennial generation, an intriguing idea you can learn more about in Vice.
All of the aforementioned articles appeared between the end of July and the beginning of September 2019, when VSCO girls were a hot topic in the internet culture industry. However, given how quickly things change in the industry these days, discussing VSCO girls more than two months after the term first went viral might seem quaint and out of touch. Although the VSCO girl represents a real, widespread fashion trend, the phenomena of the VSCO girl is more noteworthy as an example of how an entire subculture can become a viral meme. Jokes about "basic" young females will never go away. The novel aspect is their quick expansion into something considerably larger than before.
To define a VSCO girl, one need only look at the products she buys, which provides a clear picture of the culture in which she lives. A VSCO girl's "starter pack" will probably consist of the following: Her shorts, which are probably from Nike or the juniors' department shop Brandy Melville, where there is only one size (called "small"), are hidden under a T-shirt that is so baggy that covers the bottom of her legs. She nearly always has at least one (and often more) scrunchies on her wrist, often in addition to a bracelet from Pura Vida, a company that started in Costa Rica. She'll have a Hydro Flask ($35 per water bottle) and a Fjallraven backpack (both Swedish brands). Birkenstock sandals (or any other ugly-trendy shoe, such as Crocs or Fila Disruptors), Burt's Bees or Carmex lip balm topped with Glossier gloss, and a puka shell choker will round off her ensemble. VSCO girls, as a teenager recently characterized them to me, are the kind who spend 20 minutes getting their messy buns appear exactly so, yet the style is pricey to attain and laid-back in reality. That style infuses the app itself: The 2012 photo-editing app VSCO functions similarly to Instagram's drafts section. Even though VSCO functions similarly to a social network (there are profiles and "liking"), there is significantly less pressure to create a perfect-looking or algorithm-winning VSCO feed, as Instagram continues to operate as the public-facing social media self. Still, the point of VSCO is to improve the aesthetics of your photographs, and if stereotypes are to be believed, adolescent females are the only ones really concerned with this.
The VSCO girls have long been a punchline. In a deadpan opening to a video titled "becoming the ideal VSCO girl," YouTuber Greer Jones said in January: She makes light of her college studies and low grade point average by saying, "Today I'm going to be striving to become a VSCO girl, since that's my life ambition." To paraphrase, "I truly admire the women on VSCO." In those days, all it took to be considered a "VSCO girl" was a stylish VSCO feed. Greer snaps images of white sneakers next to succulents, saying dryly, "I think my shoes and the plant, it just really represents who I am as a person and, I don't know, it's very profound." This is an attempt to attain the retro-flecked, trying-to-look-like-you're-not-trying style prevalent on the app. Similar to "hipster," "emo," and "basic," the phrase may be used as an insult against others or as an apologia for oneself. Greer is making fun of the VSCO girls, yet she has some of the same signifiers as them. A video of her getting ready for her sophomore year was released in August; in it, she wore the sartorial foundations of VSCO girl: a simple T-shirt tucked into denim shorts, a choker, and a messy hairstyle wrapped with a scrunchie. Since then, adolescent girls who are themselves VSCO girls have created the most popular parodies of VSCO girls, making the jokes more of a self-deprecating joke than an act of sexism (although there is plenty of that going on in other portrayals, too). TikTok, the short-form video app, has become the defining social media network of Generation Z in the year since it launched in the US. This is where you'll find the VSCO girl. Its hallmark is offbeat humor and absurd antics. POV films, in which youths videotape themselves playing a role and talk directly to the viewer, have also been popular on the platform.
User-created VSCO girl POVs first appeared this summer, with many casting the viewer in the position of the unfortunate new student seated next to one. She'd all of a sudden start bragging about her Hydro Flask, forcefully lend you some scrunchies, and quote old memes that had been appropriated from black, LGBTQ, and stan culture (like "and I — oop" and "sksksk"). She is annoyingly cheerful and an advocate for eco-consciousness by showy spending, which is the punchline (metal straws, fancy water bottles, Birkenstock sandals, etc.). Although this sort of high school cliché is nothing new, it seems especially appropriate in this day and age of "rescue the turtles" and social media posturing. Instead of being unremarkable, adolescent females with Fjallraven backpacks and large tie-dye shirts are now a target of teasing because of POV parodies. Similar to "hipster," "emo," and "basic," the phrase may be used as an insult against others or as an apologia for oneself. To NBC News, a 16-year-old said, "I've never really categorized myself as a 'VSCO girl' until it really became a fad, and I thought, 'Oh, I suppose I'm a 'VSCO girl' now!
Similarly, the businesses mentioned in the VSCO-girl joke were caught off guard. PR emails from scrunchie retailer Claire's and yoga apparel company Pura Vida have used "VSCO girls" in the subject line since the word became popular. Hydro Flask declined to comment on sales numbers but claimed that its parent business "continues to prosper" and increased by 23.6 percent in Q1; however, neither Pura Vida nor any of the other manufacturers I contacted with reported any significant sales increases as a result of the meme. The same may be said for the VSCO female mascot app. Even while the trend hasn't led to an increase in users, VSCO CEO Joel Flory told me he's pleased to leverage the media's unexpected interest in the company to promote its goal. It aspires to be Instagram's more relaxed and imaginative counterpoint, devoid of cyberbullying, anxiety, and "compare culture." VSCO hopes to be a safe space where young people don't care what their peers think of their images and films, based on the results of a recent poll on young people and mental health. Seventy-five percent of VSCO's 20 million weekly users are under the age of twenty-five, but he argues, "VSCO girls are nothing new." But he does want people to know that the culture of the real app is more varied than the meme has led us to believe when we see what people are hashtagging with #VSCOgirl. "Mentioning [VSCO] as part of one's identity is nothing new," he adds. There are no plans to alter marketing strategies to appeal to VSCO females. He did, however, mention that the unexpected flurry of coverage of VSCO girls by hundreds of journalists was the only reason he was sitting in the Vox offices for an interview. To which I reply, "We are here," he replies. "There are avenues that have been cleared for dialogue to take place." He and the VSCO spokesperson winked at me and gave me a Hydro Flask. The finest videos with VSCO girls, like with most things, are the ones that completely backfire. Unprepared for the sprinklers to go off at 6 a.m., TikToker Charlotte Woods and her friends' attempt at creating a VSCO-esque outdoor sleeping fort, replete with fairy lights and printed sheets, was ruined and rendered uninhabitable.
Even if the VSCO girl is a better joke than a useful descriptor of millions of teenage girls, she is now a part of the cultural understanding of Gen Z, a new type of teen to both worship and mock, just as we did with girls who wore similarly outdoorsy clothing, clunky shoes, fancy water bottles, and hair accessories ten years ago (although back then it was North Face fleeces, Uggs, Nalgenes, and headbands). While each of these things may be seen as luxurious and desirable individually, when bundled together to establish a label for the people who wear them, it is not a complement. One 15-year-old told Slate, "Usually, we point out [VSCO females] to each other when we see them, and we may laugh at them a little bit, just because they're so conformist." According to another person's assessment, "They're just sort of simple and not that intriguing as individuals." Labeling individuals has this impact; any high school drama would tell you that. The VSCO girl label, like the "basic" girls of the mid- to early-2010s, slaps any adolescent wearing an oversized T-shirt and a scrunchie with a dozen additional signifiers, some of which may or may not apply to her: That she's bland and uninteresting, that she cares too much about how her photos turn out even if they seem like everyone else's, and that she's the most try-hard of them all because she tries so hard not to appear to be trying. Typical gender roles for women are also a losing battle. It's certainly no accident that the "basic" adolescents who came before VSCO girls tended to be white and well-off. Generational stereotypes are generally centered on what affluent, white people do and purchase, and this interest in the activities of the rich has been present in mainstream culture for quite some time. Although millennials are the first generation in modern history to wind up worse off financially than their parents, two of the most damaging symbols of this age are avocado toast and entitlement. It's simpler to ignore the mass of financially struggling millennials and focus on the few who are earning millions by documenting their experiences online.
Of course, the VSCO girls aren't the first high school cliché to go viral; e-boys, horse-girls, and scene kids have all had their moments in the spotlight as well. However, they may be the ones that have achieved virality the quickest and with the most enthusiastic involvement from the media. The virality of the phrase "VSCO girl" has surprised even the article's author. In response to hearing about the meme from the teens she interviewed for another article, Roisin Lanigan wrote "A Guide to VSCO Girls: The Tumblr Girls of 2019" on i-D UK, which is owned by Vice, on July 26. The article became a huge hit throughout the summer, surprising both her and her editor who had no idea who VSCO girls were. According to Lanigan, the media's appetite for VSCO material has now taken an awkward turn. "I usually simply roll my eyes at the articles anymore," she said to me through Twitter direct message. Some online publications use the term "Gen Z" as a filler phrase without ever having bothered to learn about, engage with, or even consider themselves part of the generation in question. It also reveals that you treat them as a mysterious species that you don't fully comprehend. As far as Google search patterns are concerned, the VSCO girl as a meme is on the decline. And the processes that gave rise to it are just going to speed up and become more potent in the future. It's worth wondering whether we really want to keep making a fuss about the same group of adolescent girls just so we can make fun of them.
