How the #$%^& did I got into gyaru? My gyaru history

Yo fam! What's up? 💖

I have tons of drafts written... Like years ago! Stuff I never published before because it needed further proofreading, needed more pictures... Or the opposite, only had pictures saved as draft, and I was lacking the words! Lol.

So here it is a very old and unhinged draft (probably from early 2021, it's like it's written by a different person, beware!) that I wrote about my own gyaru history, about growing up and GLOWING UP, after almost 12 years of gyaru! 

Soooo how exactly did I got into gyaru? 

Let's travel back in time to the year 2002, where the literal GAL BOOM exploded. 

At the time I was 13 years old and completely unaware of it, as I didn't care much about fashion cuz my boom was ANIME. I mean, I loved the whole amekaji aesthetic that was trending in the 00s. I can only see it now, but that "amekaji" was truly bleeding onto local brands, and I liked the combo of sporty/cute, yeah, but there was no way to afford it.

The whole otaku life with a low budged was pretty difficult back then, I HAD TO CHOOSE between going to cons and paying for entrance ticket OR getting anime merch/manga tankoubons/anime cds and shit (IF I was able to afford anything, tbh). Sometimes fashion was definitely out of the question.

I looked like this, wtf was up with the tan? idk xD

or like this lol

 

I literally begged my mom for a pc and a broadband connection back then, cuz I couldn't download anime episodes on a dial-up connection... So all my money went towards that.

I went to cons that were basically screenings of newest animes. I had seen a few life-changing animes that truly converted me to the genre, like Weiss Kreuz, Fushigi Yuugi, Ayashi no Ceres, Yami no Matsuei, to name a few that comes off the top of my head. This is when I stumbled upon SUPER GALS! 

(It seems I also made sure I had no money left by 

spending my small allowance on cosplays lol)

although this one was borrowed from a fellow otaku friend (?

It was 2003 already, I had penpals at that time too (lol, a life without internet, can you imagine?) and we exchanged really low res copies of some manga chapters and also some recommendations over the post. One of them was super into Mint na bokura by Wataru Yoshizumi and all the shoujo manga that appeared on Ribon magazine, and that obviously led her to Super GALS. So she was like "oh, Tsuki, you know, you might like this manga, Super GALS, I think it's up your alley!". And oh boy, she truly got me back then, cuz she was right about it. She even sent me some article about it she found in a magazine and made a copy for me. That girl was pure love I swear (I'm still in contact with her after all this years lol 💖).

I loved the synopsis about Super GALS. I truly saw my younger self in Ran Kotobuki, always wanting to be the center of attention AND the most fashionable gal ever, always up to date with trends. The most charismatic gal ever and against all prejudice and injustice. Broooo I really felt that!

So imagine my surprise when around 2004 I found out that my local con was gonna do a screening of Super GALS?!!??!?!?! I WENT NUTS. We were even planning to make cosplays of Ran/Miyu/Aya with my squad, within our low budgets of course, but no one would ever recognize us XD Anyways... although the anime was full of filler, we loved it and I was so lucky to be able to watch it and was really content with that. I never looked past the anime, tho. The low budget thing was real and I didn't even wear makeup so once the SUPER GALS boom was over, I moved onto different animes...

So, like I told you above, I got into SUPER GALS! anime but I never thought of getting into "gyaru" myself. I thought kogyaru was cute and that GAL was just that. Kogyaru. lol. Let a gal be ignorant and weeby, okay? Remember I was 15 at most! (2004 for sure)

I told you guys I moved onto newer and more exciting animes, after all, the 00s were the golden era of anime, there was so much good shit to watch, I felt like I've never catch up with everything lol.

I completely forgot about Super Gals and kogyaru for a while... So let's fast forward to 2009.

In LatinAmerica we had a social network that was huge back then, called FOTOLOG. Fotolog was just like Instagram, it had the same social effect: you would post a cute picture with a caption (that noone would read) and compete with other people about how many comments you got under your post. Each post had a limit of 20 comments and if you had all the 20 comment slots full, you were considered POPULAR AF, thus more people would rush to comment under your pic in time. LOL what a wild ride xD

I was somewhat popular in Fotolog due to the emo/scene current at the time, so my aesthetic was super different to gyaru, but even then I was trying to move a bit from the emo shit and getting back on track and looking (somewhat?) fashionable, also started looking up some trends from haute couture, VOGUE magazine and fashion bloggers (and failing at it btw! haha). We were having a bit of a blogger boom in here also! So I was very much transitioning from emo to normie-chan, basically, ahahah.

But Fotolog had one last card under their sleeve, and that was a gyaru scan themed fotolog.

I SWEAR TO GOD everything changed when I stumbled upon that page, which provided also some download links! I became rabid for anything gyaru. I don't remember which one was the first, but I do remember it was Jelly/ViVi. The content was clearly more grownup/toned down gyaru but it was matching with the blogger aesthetic I was looking for. Hey, they even had a substyle called "blogger"/"mode"! I was in heaven! I even remember I got some NYLON Japan scans, wow.

This was my jam back then too lol

Of course this led me to dig up more and more scans until my pc storage was full af and I had to burn some data dvds lol but nothing mattered anymore cuz I GOT EGG, RANZUKI, AGEHA and all those "holy grail" magazines...

 

I even remember I found a forum called "Gyaru no Paradaisu" that was run by the Hysterical gals from the iconic Spanish gyarusa. I started participating in the forum, but a bit erratically.

After all, 2009 was a super insecure year for me, I was focused on uni and working full shifts at Starbucks, that was difficult enough, plus some snarky comments about ganguro/yamanba that my gf at the time made, all that made me push it to the back of my mind. But believe me, a fire was sparked in my heart, so as soon as that gf ditched me I went back to my love of Japanese magazines and started experimenting with my fashion style and also tried to be a blogger for a while. So this was what I did on 2010 (and aside from Gyaru no Paradaisu, I didn't get into online communities like Ricoche and all, cuz I didn't know they existed).

2010 vs 2015

Soooooooooo FINALLY! in 2011 I felt like I had enough "practice" and joined some gyaru facebook communities to start indulging in gal style FOR ONCE AND FOR ALLLLLLLLLL. I even created this blog to share the highly rapidly pace at what gal was evolving in my country (Argentina) and to document my style, my hauls, etc.

(well, tecnically the first post was in late 2010 about random things I liked like my blinged out phone - but not really gal imo and I started being constant in 2011 soooo I take March 2011 as my gal anniversary date)

I think the rest is history! :) I'm still in love with gal, almost 12 years later so this marks a decade in gal style and how important the style is for me...

I'll continue in the next post! (GYARU MEME DAY 1)

If you read everything until here, I LOVE YOU lol

xoxo,

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