The VSCO Girl Phenomenon

What is a VSCO girl?  A legitimate question.  If you don't have an Instagram account and you aren't a 13 year old girl, you would be excused from not knowing they exist.  However, in my cohort at school, the VSCO girl phenomenon is alive among dozens of girls who are now walking around with hair scrunchies on their wrists, weaving friendship bracelets, and refusing to drink out of anything plastic.  

Being a fairly new phenomenon, there is no definition of a VSCO girl in any dictionary in print, however, they are defined on social media, blogs, and in urban dictionaries all over the internet.  A huge part of the definition of VSCO girls centers around branding.

Image retrieved from https://www.instagram.com/p/B1j-6zvgrMO/?utm_source=ig_embed

VSCO girls are well known to wear and use the specific brands shown in the above image.  They have been described as being perennially "beach-ready" (Salazar, 2019), and their look went viral over the recent summer season in the United states, featuring, sunshine, shorts with oversized tshirts or tube tops, woven friendship bracelets, and driving to the beach in Jeeps with casual beach hair flowing (Minutaglio, 2019).  Any VSCO girl description is incomplete without reference to the 'sksksksksk' sound they make to show when they are incredulous, and their catchphrase, 'and I oop' which originally shows surprise, but is now used constantly, to mean almost anything (Dickson, 2019), as I can fully confirm if there use of it in my year 8 English class is anything to go by!

The VSCO girl has been built on the empire of the 'contemporary constructed nostalgic photograph' as identified by Baker (2016), as an image edited to appear aged or retro, cropped to fit onto an internet platform.  VSCO is actually the name of a photo editing app which is popular among users of Instagram and Tik Tok, two of the most commonly used apps for sharing photos and videos.  VSCO editing offers casual, simple, beach-inspired filters, which have exactly supported the emerged VSCO girl image.  When I began my research on this topic to create this blog post, I was aware of what a VSCO girl was, and had a vague idea of how the concept had evolved gained from discussions with students at school. As I have undertaken research into the phenomenon though, I have been interested to better understand some of the factors which influenced the creation of VSCO girls, as well as the VSCO girl impact.

Initially, VSCO girls may be thought to be a harmless trend impacting teenage girls.  While this may be true, there is a lot more to the trend than this.  When VSCO released their mobile phone filters, they were an instant success, and they decided to create their own platform for self-expression (Davis, 2019). The VSCO app features a page of carefully curated uploads which all users can view, giving prominence to the photos which are displayed (Davis, 2019).  One of the major purposes of this display is to build the VSCO brand (Davis, 2019).  I found this to be extremely interesting, especially considering the VSCO girl look and the filter features of the VSCO app match up perfectly.  How much of the VSCO girl look was created by users, and how much has been promoted by the careful selection of images displayed on the app main page? 

Regardless of who created the trend, the impact is significant.  A 25% surge in the Vans sneakers worn by VSCO girls has been attributed to the sensation, a significant impact which is characteristic of internet consumer evidence in 2019 (Singer, 2019).  In my investigation I have found Davis' (2019) work on the revolutionary shift of curators to be fascinating.  This book discusses the change from curators being few and elite, to the creation of an entire class of curators - users of sharing apps who curate and share their opinions, ideas and preferences (Davis, 2019).  In the context of the VSCO girl I found it intriguing to reflect on.

At the end of the day, VSCO girls are now among us, and they seem to be growing in number.  They chastise me for drinking from a plastic water bottle, share friendship bracelets and facial spray, and there seems constantly to be a voice in background somewhere 'sksksk'ing.  Part of the viral nature of the VSCO girl has resulted from a deluge of memes and videos poking generally good-natured fun of them, so I'll leave you with a few of those...

Video from (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iEtquLxNocU)

Image from (https://www.popsugar.com/smart-living/funny-vsco-girl-memes-46625495)

Image from (https://thetab.com/uk/2019/09/09/vsco-girl-memes-124291)

Image from (Meme)

References:

Baker, S.L. (2016). Constructing the contemporary nostalgic image. (Thesis, The University of Arizona). Retrieved from https://search.proquest.com/docview/1858145381/?pq-origsite=primo

Davis, S. (2019). The rise of the curator class: Changing the way we buy, sell and make everything. Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger.

Dickson, E. (2019, September 5). All hail the VSCO girl, the latest gen-z meme to make you feel impossibly old. Rolling Stone. Retrieved from https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/vsco-girl-meme-internet-what-is-gen-z-879667/

Minutaglio, R. (2019, August 16). Brandy Melville, Birkenstocks, and beach-wave hair: Inside the VSCO girl tribe taking over the internet. Elle. Retrieved from https://www.elle.com/fashion/trend-reports/a28709397/vsco-girls-what-to-know/

Salazar, A. (2019, September 1). What it means to be a VSCO girl. Refinery29. Retrieved from https://www.refinery29.com/en-us/2019/08/241916/vsco-girls-instagram-youtube-tik-tok-twitter-meme-explained

Singer, M. (2019, September 29). What, exactly, is a VSCO girl, and why are brands listening to them? Sydney Morning Herald. Retrieved from https://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/fashion/what-exactly-is-a-vsco-girl-and-why-brands-are-listening-to-them-20190924-p52ugw.html