On Criticism of the VSCO Girl Anyone Who Has Spent Any Amount of Time
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Sksksksksk: On Criticism of The VSCO Girl Anyone who has spent any amount of time on TikTok, an app popular with Gen Z kids for short-form comedy videos, can tell you who a VSCO Girl is. Her T-shirt is oversized. She has a Hydroflask brand reusable water bottle in her Kanken backpack. A puka shell necklace adorns her neck and scrunchies adorn her slim wrists. She wears Birkenstocks, maybe Crocks. Her cheeks are spattered with freckles. Her hair is highlighted naturally, meant to look more sun- kissed than bleached blonde. She looks like she could have stepped out of a Ron John Surf Shop catalog. She's low maintenance, so she doesn't have the time to achieve the airbrushed perfection the Instagram Baddies of 2017 or E-Girls of 2018. She's environmentally conscious, she uses a metal straw and reusable shopping bags to do her part in saving the turtles. She is the response to the fake, plastic, try-hard types of girls who were the popular aesthetic for the past year or so. For a fleeting moment, she something to aspire to, but not anymore. Because everyone knows she's shallow and vapid and only cares about getting the filter right on the photo of her eight- dollar artisan latte she's going to post on Instagram. Her girl-next-door aesthetic and environmental activism is only done for social clout. To be her is to be everything wrong with this generation, according to some of the loudest voices on the internet. Those who have been involved in internet culture for a few years will not be surprised by the concept of VSCO Girls. The name is a reference to the photo editing app VSCO (pronounced Vis-Coh), that specializes in muted, hazy filters and has attracted users of a certain bohemian aesthetic to its platform. To sum up, calling someone a "VSCO Girl" is another way to call them Basic. Searching "VSCO Girl" on TikTok brings up 1,347,493,483 results, few of them positive. One of the most widespread is by TikTok user @koobydoobydoobydoo. The girl in the video sits down in front of the camera and speaks to it as if she is speaking to a new student at a school. "Sksksk and I oop and I oop, oh hi there you must be new!" She greets in an overly cheerful tone (@koobydoobydoobydoo). "sksksksk" and "I oop" are popular catchphrases among VSCO Girls which originated in Twitter circles and got picked up by the mostly instagram-based community. "Oh, this? This is my new lipgloss. I apply this every five, maybe ten minutes." She continues, her voice getting more and more shrill. It is uncomfortable to watch, a cruel caricature of an interaction that most likely never occurred in the first place. At this point, there is more content ridiculing and villainizing these young women than genuine VSCO Girls posting content. Their critics often point out their lack of sincerity about the environmental messages they preach. They claim she is only out for popularity and believe she should be shamed for her attention seeking in the name of such an important cause. Metal straws, reusable water bottles, and a desire to care for the environment are all staples of VSCO culture. The VSCO Girl is portrayed as someone who has all the trappings of a bleeding heart environmentalist without any of the heart. “Save the turtles!” She loudly declares, apparently only in it for the social clout. Her “concern” is ridiculed as naive. What will one less straw in the sea contaminated with toxic waste do? Corporations are the largest cause of pollution. The impact of the average person is nothing compared to the waste produced by the companies that have the money and political power to destroy without any consequences. The planet is being systematically destroyed by billion-dollar corporations and it seems like there is nothing we can do about it. So how quaint it is for her to think that her contribution of a few less straws or plastic bottles in the ocean will do anything to stop the impending disaster, her critics claim. What could she do to be considered genuine, though? Most VSCO Girls are tweens or teens, barely independent from their parents. They don’t have the ability to make bigger changes in their lives than reducing their plastic use or spreading awareness. Even if they could, those who do go to more extremes-- vegans, zero wasters; etc-- are mocked even more. Isn’t it commendable that the VSCO Girl is trying, even if her method isn't perfect? She is aware of some aspects of her impact and she is taking a step to fix it, which is more than can be said for most of those who mock her. The loudest critics of VSCO Girls are often those who are too jaded to do much of anything. They have accepted their fate, which is to live in a world that will start to become uninhabitable in some places by the time they are in their middle age (Lewis). To them, the VSCO Girl’s naive trying is useless, and perhaps reminds them that they are doing even less. She may not be saving the world by keeping a few hundred straws or plastic bags out of the ocean, but she is making more of an impact than her critics are. Her genuine effort reminds others of how they do even less, and this may contribute to the level of vehemence and ridicule VSCO Girls receive. But VSCO Girl culture isn’t just about the turtles. It is also about the Girl. Another curious trend about the VSCO Girl phenomenon is the people who dislike it the most. Logging on to TikTok, searching “VSCO Girl” brings up a plethora of parody videos. The authors of these videos tend to be white, conventionally attractive teens and young adults, many of them women. The parodies are scathing. One starts by commenting on the VSCO Girl’s “Average number of brain cells, which is three,” (@aidanregretsowningtiktok) another depicts a stereotypical VSCO Girl being offered a plastic straw and having an emotional breakdown at the thought of using one. (@hgh_hannah) The list is endless and countless examples could be found. In the later video of the woman being offered a plastic straw, which has comments like “u still use a plastic cup � oh god” “ATTENTION ALL VSCO GIRLS: the cup is alllllll plastic you not saving the turtle.” “But ur using a plastic cup? THE CLOWNERY ” and others decrying their superiority over the “brainless” VSCO Girls being mocked in the video. (It should be noted. this comment, and others decrying the VSCO Girl’s stupidity are common, even though the reason many have begun lobbying against plastic straws is that straws are too thin to be recycled, hence why they often end up in the ocean unlike thicker platic cups. The size and shape of the straw also makes it more dangerous to marine life. A video of a turtle with a straw stuck up its nose was one of the sparks that started the anti-straw movement (Rosenbaum).) The video backlog of TikTok user @hgh_hannah reveals a girl with a beachy aesthetic, polaroid pictures decorating her room, and scrunchies on her wrists-- all the hallmarks of VSCO Girl culture. Again, in another video proclaiming that “VSCO Girls are devils,” with more comments emphatically agreeing, the author's backlog of videos reveals a classic VSCO aesthetic. This is a common theme. A large fraction of those who are mock VSCO Girl culture could be described, and even self-identify as, VSCO Girls. This seems confusing at first, but this is not a new phenomenon. While the term VSCO Girl is relatively new, the concept is not. Young women have been mocked for engaging with and taking part in popular culture since most of them can remember. The words “pumpkin spice” still have connotations far beyond a coffee flavor. This phenomenon seems to be unique to teen girls. Boys are not given a special name that articulates just how stupid and vapid one believes them to be for liking pop culture. They are sometimes made fun of and characterized, sure, but there is no single word you can say to articulate an entire concept that compares to VSCO Girl. Critics will claim the insult is not sexist. There are Cool Girls, those who do not conform to this stereotype, but finding them seems hard. One TikTok shows a teen boy conducting mini interviews with girls in his school. He asks them if they are VSCO Girls, and when they vehemently deny this, he looks knowingly into the camera or points out a contradiction. In one instance, he points so a girl’s water bottle as “proof” of her being a VSCO Girl. She explains that it is a different brand, not the VSCO Girl’s beloved Hydroflask, to which he replies, “an off- brand Hydroflask, same thing”. The criticism of Hydroflask bottles or Fjällräven backpacks are that they are expensive, a sign of the girl’s privilege. They are a sign she is wealthy and therefore out of touch with the causes she claims to care so much about. However, when this definition is expanded to include not just these specific brands, as it has, it loses its meaning. When every girl with a water bottle or a backpack is a VSCO Girl, it can't be a criticism of a specific girl, but a critique of girls in general.