"Gal was always femenist"- a brief look

Hey welcome back

So today we're tackling some TikTok missinfo I see sticking still, and that's the notion that gal was rebelling against JP beauty standards, and by extension, that the gal is a feminist movement. Sorry if this ends up not as segmented as normal. This is a very deep topic, so like yk. Also, like fair warning, this entry will have magazine scans and talk about sexual topics, nothing you wouldn't see in Gyaru magazines, but like maybe save this one for off the bus lol. And obviously I am happy to see proof to the contrary throughout this post, and this is all to my best Gaijin none Jp speakings unbderstanding,  please do not cite this as 100% the most accurate.

Trigger warnings for topics to do with weight, weight loss, rape, sexual assault and pedophilia.

So what's wrong with that?

Well, the truth is it's not entirely true (at least in my understanding), I can see why people can interpret Gal like this, hell, I used to, but to me at least it feels like a very surface-level understanding of gal that ignores a lot of things to work. now dont get me wrong as i said i can see why its seen like that esspecialy through the lense of western politics, kuro styles went against the beauty standard of paleness in jp and a lot of what gal does does break social norms (esspecially for woman) and i can ackgnolage that some parts of gal can deffenetly be seen through the lense of (western) femmenisim and as rebbeeling against beauty standards and i can first hand ackgnolage the freedom (if you will) that gal gives you and how good it feels to be unapolegetically yourself which is what gal is about but even with that we have to remember we view gal through a western lense thats very diffrent to how gal was viewed in JP.

So, how is Gal not feminist?

Well, first we have to acknowledge that feminism in JP is different to that of the West and very much so, but I will leave that topic to either locals or those with a degree to back them, coz well im not qualified here but will leave y'all off with the Wikipedia article to start y'all off in the understanding of basics. But what I can speak on is gal. Now, as much as these days, especially in the West, gal is a bit of a girls' girl subculture that's not always been the case. In the west, we had things like gyaru secrets and lolcow threads, but this isn't even truly a western phenomenon. Many things were happening among JP gals that would directly ruin any claims of feminism. The biggest being quite simply a majority of gals were dressing for the male gaze, in most magazines you will read, you'll always find something to do with dating and how to be more attractive to men, hell, even Egg started off as a porn magazine. I mean, hell, take a look at the scan below (sorry for the translation quality, all I have is Google Translate)

Egg Magazine vol. 10 circa 1997

Now, if you take a second to read what you can, you'll notice just how egg spoke about its models early on, hell, even the winning prize being a drink that makes you lose weight? Does that seem very feminist? Now I know 1997 is the beginning of egg and all, but I need y'all to know this has been a thing since day one. 

Let's look at a modern issue of egg, vol. 213 from 2014, to see how egg might have improved. Let's start with some ads that were run in this issue, starting with:

Oh, look, a diet ad, a staple of pretty much every magazine I've ever read for gal and for the sake of my own curiosity, I figured out the BMI for each of these girls (disclaimer about BMI not being all that accurate) coz im sure y'all will see the problem very quickly:

Ayaha: underweight by 3.2kg

Risa: underweight by 5.8kg

Tomomi: under by 4.3kg

Shiori: under by 0.9kg (IN 2 WEEKS)

Now, why am I putting this here? Simple gal magazines (and wider culture within Asia) genuinely promote being underweight for women, and gals also stuck to this and very much took these dietary supplements to lose weight. I should mention that a safe rate of weight loss is about 0.5-1Kg a week, so losing 8.5kg in 2 weeks is very telling about this medication if you ask me. 

On another very feminist page, we have a whole section about how men only want big boobs (but obviously not too big and they can never sag), including a lovely ad for some boob enhancement pills. And of course:

Even more talk about what men want (so shape up, girls) coz we all know that we should put all our worth on how men see us and our bodies, right? This is all to continue to say that there hasn't been a time really where gal magazines weren't rooted a little bit, at least in misogyny (like general JP culture, but again, that topic is too big to handle in this post), this is the info being fed directly to the of the time gals who were, in large part teenagers, why do we think a lot of girls in JP (and by extent Jfashion communities) have struggled with EDs?

Oh, and of course, to top it off, we get an ad for plastic surgery, which, mind you, Im not even against (nor girls being sexy if they want, mind you), Im just simply trying to show y'all with whatever primary sources I have that Gal wasn't really as feminist as we like to think it is. And it's not only in egg, but this is pretty much every magazine

Soul Sister vol.14 circa 2013

Popteen circa 2007

Ranzuki circa. 2009

Ageha circa. 2008

And so on, any magazine you read will have the same things in it: diet pills, plastic surgery, how to appeal to men, how to grow your boobs, what men think of xyz. These are honestly just examples I found from a quick look through what I'd consider the biggest magazines in the gal space, at random, mind you, I didn't particularly go searching. Well, im missing men's egg, but like men's egg has actual porn in it, like im not joking.

Men's Egg vol.110 circa.2008

I hope y'all enjoyed my censor job lmao (Google helped a little bit), but this is the average men's egg issue, once again egg started as a pornj mag and men's egg continued that mission statement (as far as im aware) to its death. And well with what we're seeing with New egg company..... but I hope this showed y'all that the magazines that gals worship were never feminist (which leads to the fact that the readers weren't either, demographics and the like). But magazines are magazines, what about actual people, you ask? Well...

Gal culture in it's heyday

So obviously magazines aren't real life, they post models and edited pictures, the best bits if you will, so what about normal gals? Well, it's not like they were off much better on the feminism scale. Compensated dating (basically prostitution) was common among the teenage gals who would often sleep with older men for money or brand, problematic age gap relationships were common and even seen in magazines, such as in this scan:

Soul Sister vol. 9 circa. 2013

Whilst at first glance all seems fine if you look at the couple in the top right, it all starts falling apart when you notice the ages being 21 for the man and 16 for the girl, and despite this, they were already talking about getting married 3 months into the relationship. Many gals had no other option but to be sex workers, and many gals were homeless. Not every gal was a black diamond member, not every gal had it good, hell speaking of B Dia, there were even rumours (on whose validity I will not comment) of girls sleeping their way into B Dia and sleeping their way into staying in it. many times where we see the most extreme of tans or hair, it's coz girls were trying to be better than one another, it want very girls girl back then. not to mention the numerous girls that did get raped and saed, coz despite what tiktok offencively will tell you, gal was never meant to be ugly and especially never meant to prevent rape. 

this maybe a bit of a tangent, but I want this to be included here, so please let me have my minuite but if you really are one of the people who believe in the idea that (ya)manba was ugly to prevent rape i want you to take a second and really think about that, why? why in your head, do you think only pretty people get raped? Why is rape so exclusive in your mind? I ask all this as a victim of Child sexual abuse. I survived getting raped as a kid, and with whatever power to talk on this gives me i want you, dear reader, to know how disgusting this sentiment is; it really is offensive. Rape has nothing to do with anything but the rapist wanting power over another person; how a victim looks, dresses, speaks, or anything really has nothing to do with rape. If people have the power to rape children, animals, their spouses, family, strangers, what makes you think some weird makeup would prevent that? why would someone looking "ugly" precvent rape, is it not rape if someone is ugly? as much as i know this came from a good place originaly i cant help to ponder this once in a while and just how much this boils down to how a rapist would think, rape culture is real to this day esspecially in japan, why would we wanna play into that? Why do we wanna pass on something that at the end of the day boils down to a rape appologist victim blaming lie? Why do we wanna invalidate victims just coz we wanna say "ugly people can't get raped, theyre too ugly to be raped" and by extension "well they should be happy they got raped its not like their ugly ass would get it otherwise so it wasn't really rape". 

Maybe im being a bit extreme there, but it's something that's been bothering me for a long, long while, esspecially when gal at the end of the day was always about the male gaze back then, girls dressed for men and to get the attention of men for the most part, they were taking inspo from celebreties from the west to be trendy just like any other person is now and will be for a long time yet. Gal has never really been femenist but at the same time, anything started mostly by women and for women will have feminist notes to it. I don't blame anyone for reading feminism into gal esspecially at first, and especially with the amount of misinformation out there, but when you look into gal even a little deeper, the idea that gal was always some amazing feminist thing falls apart really quickly. I love for us to take the good things about gal forward, I love seeing the confidence it gives people, I love seeing gal become a girls girl subculture and I love how much feminisim is coming into gal but with all that we cant forget our roots and we cant dissmiss the bad and forget it for "Those who cannot remember the past are condemmed to repeat it" -George Santayana, 1905. 

 Do zobaczenja <3

With thanks to Gal Revo for the Scans and Amyh for Blog Deco

FNAF2 movie

 Hey welcome back,

And welcome back to another classic life blog. So me and the bf went to see the second FNAF movie, and omg do I have thoughts coz omg what a movie. We were lowkey so hyped FNAF2 is the bf's fav game in the franchise, and I do love my Mango (iykyk ass reference), and I was so hyped to see my little mango on screen coz omg gender neutral monarch. We went on release night, and omg was the theater packed, we were lowkey shocked, coz we didn't expect it. By chance, the Christmas market was also happening, so we had a walk around, but we're lowkey broke, so we didn't get much lol. So let's talk about it:

Xmas market goodies

So as I said, we didn't do much at the market, we did have a good walk around tho, the food (it was 99% food) smelled good, but we didn't partake much in it apart from some cookies (the 2 we ate on the day not pictured) and this fudge we got coz we won £2 off lol. Both absolutely delish.

Red Velvet and White chocolate cookie by Piccadilly Bakes, please check them out

Biscoff Fudge by The Finest Fudge Co, please check them out

And just in case anyone wants to get on my ass, this is not sponsored, of course, as if anyone would wanna sponsor me lol. Anyway, outside of that we also popped into the Popmart coz there's one in the city center here (shade on the previous city I lived in lol) just coz I've never been in and wanted to just check it out lol and y'all when I say the worker in there recognised me as gal...... I lowkey almost cried, I got so many compliments on my makeup, I lowkey am loving it here up north, you wouldn't get this down south, I swear. Anyway, that is quite literally everything that happened pre movie so....

Spoilers ahead

So the FNAF 2 movie, omg. So first I would like to ask Scott what the fuck he was thinking, what do you mean he's now telling me Mike and Michael are different fucking people????? like excuse me???????? also is it me (tbf bf also agreed) but did toy bonny just not sound like hes being voiced by matpat? also I was so prepped for toy chica to take her beak off to bite the teacher guy but no we cant have nice stuff I guess but Megan fox did do an amazing job i really liked her performance (this tiktok also helps). I love how the movie handdled the puppet omg finally we get some charactarazation for one of the most important characters to the seriese like how did it take like 10 years fml, the possetion bs is so interesting but how does it also work like??? also hello baby, if the claims of scott indirectly saying the movies are supposed to fill in some gaps of the lore we missed then i really do have some questions for scott but also I will take any scraps to add to my made up mind about sister location happening roughly at the same time of the fnaf 2 locatrion being active. Also, if I may have a moment to have a crack theory here, what if (since Vanessa and Michael A seem to be the same age) originally the Afton family was Michael, Vanessa (debatable which is older/ maybe their twins), and Elizabeth, then good ol Elizabeth got babied and coz of the greif williaam went and kidnapped garett to replace Elizabeth leading to the events of the fnaf 4 minigame events. It's so uncensical, but I swear if I end up being anywhere near correct, y'all fucking owe me so much. Anyway, I won't yap y'all's eyes off. This isn't a movie review blog, or a FNAF blog, tho you can find my thoughts on twt as always, so let's get back on topic.

Spoilers are done, Make and the such

So little known fact (kinda), my fav FNAF character in the whole franchise is Mangle, and well this is the mangle movie and well I dont actually own fnaf merch or had the time to make a costume so we panic and like my eyeshadow was mangle based (I swear it was pink and white), so heres the new and upgraded make pics:

Bonus, I got a piccie with my bf, and I need y'all to see and know how cute he is, y'all better be nice to him or else 

Isn't he such a cutie <3

Anyway, that's kinda it for now, I've mentioned in my previous post that Im planning on getting back into blogging properly after xmas (tho the bf did get his old pc working enough for me to be able to post and have like a basic computer which is amazing but yk i cant really take it with me when i go to my mums for xmas (tho that will probably be a post do look out for it). Im happy to have a means to blog again, I have missed it lol, but Im gonna save it for another post, maybe an update in January idk. Anyway, have a good time of day, y'all all and as always;

Question for next post: Are you going to see/ have seen the FNAF2 movie? What did you think?

Polish word of the day: ciasteczko

Meaning cookie

 Do zobaczenja <3

With thanks to Amyh for Blog Deco

Online Gyaru spaces

Why hi, it's been a while, this is going to be a bit of a quick post. I was gonna post ages ago, inspired by a convo I was going to have on a post on the r/actuallygyaru before it got deleted, but now more so considering some "drama" happening in the space that Im somehow unwillingly involved in.

Tldr basically, op was complaining about how the gal Reddit "was mean and rude and toxic" pointing out how a part of this has to do with the fact that we give concrit left, right, and centre. And how gal is all about your attitude and how we should accept anyone who claims to be gal as gal. 

As for the "drama" well I'll be more shocked if you haven't heard about it as multiple people have talked on it but its regarding Cinna (who uses they/them stop being shitty about it yall basic respect come on now) and I will leave my part of it here and be done with it as this is not a post about drama but this whole situation and Cinnas response reminded me of this post in the first place so...

Now this is not the first post like this I've seen, and it's irking me if I'm honest, so I thought I'd put my honest feelings out about this and explain my view on gal spaces online. Consider this an honorary advice for baby gals post.

Concrit being mean

Not to be that guy, but I feel like if you feel like this, you've missed the point. We in the gal space want people to improve and be the best they can be at gal. It's why we give conceit and tips; we don't gatekeep. It's why Gal is so relatively easy to get into; we're open books about tips and such. Now, as long as I've been in gal spaces (going on for about 3 years now), everyone has always operated on the system of "concrit welcome unless said otherwise." It's an unwritten rule, and you will even find vet gals saying this. Like I don't wanna be mean but if you really don't want concrit it's not hard to put that in the title or description or anywhere in your post, like just say "concrit unwanted" and we'll not give you any, but you can't come into a space that's always been concrit accepting and giving freely and expect to be special and have those customs and rules not applied to you, I'm sorry, but that's the truth. 

People just wanna have fun

And that's fine, gal is about having fun, but gal also has rules. I also always find this point really funny when people use it to complain coz gyaru is one of the most lenient j-fashions out there, like gal has basic rules and if you keep to those you can wear and look almost any way and still be gal, it's also why we protect these rules coz they're what makes gal well gal without those you get anything else. I mean, ffs in a fashion where Ishoku is a thing, I will not take complaints about how people are only trying to be creative when half the time it's a cover for simply bad make. Like we love people experimenting really, like just recently I remade a look where my droop was inspired by batwings, and was it a bit scuff? Sure, but it stayed to gal and was fun. The one thing I will say is learn the basics of gal first.

Everyone starts somewhere

Yes,  but guess how we all improved, concrit, practice, and more concrit. Again, we don't do it to be mean, we do it coz we know that's how y'all are gonna improve, and that's all we want for y'all. We don't want everyone looking like TikTok gals forever coz y'all deserve better than that. Now that being said, you can't expect us to be praising everything you do, and we will tell you this. Why? Well...

Gals are rude and toxic..?

Is apparently something that persists. Now, are there rude and toxic gals? Yes, but there are people like that in all comms and fandoms. I think a lot of people, however, confuse gals being honest and blunt for rudeness. Now maybe I just don't see it the same as someone from a very honest and blunt culture that is Poland (and I'm sure the tisim isn't helping), but like, isn't that something people join this comm for? Like idk man, I like that about the comm. I'd rather someone tell me "girl, your makeup is not giving today," especially when you get in with gals, and it's followed by "let me fix it" or "here's how you fix it ♡". Like, I'm sorry to break it to y'all again, but giving you advice on how to improve for free is not mean, especially since we all basically got told to research it ourselves and the vet gals y'all. Should be looking up to literally had to bend over backwards for any crumb of info on gyaru coz unless you could physically go to Japan you'd have to track down the other Now vet gals and hope they could go. Like gal has never been easier to get into, so please don't be shocked when we are a little annoyed at the same basic questions being asked on repeat. Also, this is a comm of very loud, opinionated, and strong-willed people, yk the ones society would call bossy as an insult, people will stand on their shit and for themselves, don't be shocked, especially for shit we all do.

Gal is mind

No gal is also mind. Gal, first and foremost, is a fashion and makeup-based subculture. If it wasn't about the look, we wouldn't get terms such as pa gal (roughly half asked gal), and we wouldn't have gals both gaijin and not literally dragging girls coz they didn't like the way they looked. Y'all act as if JP gals are some saints that can never do wrong (which ew fetishization that's a bit problematic) when JP gals were as bad as gaijin gals. Speaking of gaijin gals..

JP gals would never it's you, modern gaiji,n that are mean

Sorry, but I can only laugh. To call modern-day gaijin toxic is so laughable to me, coz negl if you think we're bad, I would love to see what you would have thought of the old days. We used to have gal secrets, pro Anna was common, girls would fat shame, shame you for being too skinny, they'd actually insult you for having bad make, ffs there was rampant racism, which is wild to me honestly. Not to mention jp gals olkd and new aren't much better, we have new egg models doing blackface, boxbraids, and in general questionable behaviour. Not to mention the mess that is kogyaru magazine, like, be for real. Old JP gals wise Im not gonna speak too much it really is before my time, but hell girls were sleeping with the manager of black diamond to get into it, there was mad competing, the epidemic of 16-year-old girl dating a 25-year-old man type relationships, compensated dating often whilst underage (which you can't convince me is any different from these teen girls prostituting themselves for clothes), you see the imperial JP flag motif a lot which is.... yk not to mention that a lot of old brand from certain brands literally have iron crosses. Like all gals have been problematic forever and always, and we somehow are probably living in the most peaceful of gal times, I mean hell we even got "body diversity" in new egg (which isn't really inclusive, but it beats the same 1 body type) 

 

Anyway

That's where Im gonna end it otherwise Im gonna get myself worked up and Im finishing this post off very close to bedtime, take this as an unofficial return to blogging, I still don't have a working computer, so I can't work on the blog when I want as I currently have to steal the bfs pc (who runs Linux and Linux scares me I already had a heart attack coz some weird pop up came up when I was finishing this aaaa) and yeah for those who don't follow me on (mostly) twt and (lesser tho Im getting back into it) insta yeah I moved in with my bf which ill post about at some point. But I promise in the new year I will be posting more, so sorry about the absence, and I hope y'all can wait a bit longer for proper updates (I've really not been good at this blog thing, huh). Anyway, I deffo owe y'all at least this one, so:

 

 

Polish word of the day: Paradokument

Meaning Pseudo-documentary, Poland's favourite TV show genre coz this whole "drama" has me feeling like Im in one, # get me on trudne sprawy they wouldn't even be able to come up with this shit wtf

 Do zobaczenja <3

 

 

 

With thanks to you all for reading<3

 

Quick update

 Hello everyone, sorry for the absolute mess that this post will be, and especially the unformatting. As you may have noticed, updates have been slow, the keyboard on my laptop broke, and honestly, I cannot justify replacing it, and typing all of this out on my phone is a pain. I'm trying to figure out a better way around everything as we speak, so hopefully I will be back ASAP, and I'm hoping for some good posts to come up, including advice for baby gals 3 and some more life stuff (and maybe once I fully sort everything out, another magazine review). 

But all in all, stay wild and sex,y everyone.

Minecraft movie outing

 

Hey welcome back

So we have a classic life blog about me going to see the Minecraft movie, coz like my life is pretty boring and this is the most exciting thing to happen in a while in my life lol.

So, how was your day?

So yeah I went to see the Minecraft movie with my boyfriend and we managed to see it on release date, now originally we were gonna watch it in 3D coz we might as well make it a nice day out as we don't really go to the cinema often but out booking got cancelled due to "technical difficulties" and the only reason we even knew was coz of the refund going in (thanks vue for the great communication). But anyway, after I had a bit of a meltdown over it (the tisim really doesn't like sudden change lol), we ended up going for an earlier screening in 2D cos the next 3D screening would have finished at like 1am, and well the boyfriend had to drive 3 hours back home the next day.

So we finally got to the cinema, and after tackling the devil that is stairs (and finding the elevator as we reached the top.. Sidenote rip my fucked up knees) we got to where people were lined up for snacks... Que well queuing for like 40 mins or so, somehow before we grabbed our food, and I managed to grab one of the topper cups with the pink sheep coz he's a cute little guy. A highlight tho was at some point these girls came in to line up and lowkey they were adorable and had like some of those like paper crowns but it was the pink sheep i think and bless them at one point one of them notices me and turns around to her friends all excited and the classic "Omg she's got a Minecraft axolotl tattoo" got said and like it always makes me happy to hear how excited some kiddos get at my little tattoo.

Anyway, we finally made it into the theatre room and watched the movie and lowkey I really enjoyed it. Was it a good movie? No. Was it fun? Yes. Now we got lucky cos we didn't get any of the shenanigans I've seen online. Most we got was a kid repeating something a bit loud, which got shut down by the present almost immediately. The only other thing was like gasps and whoas, which I don't care about honestly. 

I did like the "subtleties" in the movie too, I loved the Technoblade reference even tho I didn't grow up with him. I also absolutely loved the old man yaoi and like, honestly new ship in the catalogue. The love plot between the villager and Jennifer Coolidge was lowkey so funny. There were so many good scenes, honestly, but Im not a movie reviewer lol, tho the last scene with the Dennis song almost made me cry, which is probably a bit pathetic. Also, the after-credits scene was so interesting.

Anyway, I should probably get onto: 

Make and the such

This is a gal blog after all lol. I went for a green make coz creeper aw man or something, and I was inspired ( I forgot by who) to try these different types of contact,s but tbh idk how to feel about them, but here goes lol

I would show y'all the coord, but lowkey I was lazy with it, mostly cos of the rush, partly coz honestly I was just tired lol. Anyway, I think that's pretty much it, quick post (that still took me like what 2 weeks to write coz im awful lol). So y'all know what time it is:

Question for next post: What's the last movie you watched? What did you think?

Polish word of the day: Kino

Meaning cinema 

 Do zobaczenja <3

Advice for baby gals 2: Make

 

Hey welcome back

So today were continuing the advice for baby gals series and covering make.

So what is today about?

So make huh, you know the thing that makes or breaks a gal look really (technically, debatably). Now, as Im sure at least a good 99% of you will know that gal is a makeup (and fashion) based subculture, meaning makeup is hella important.

Now I've been seeing a lot of posts on Reddit (coz I'm chronically online there and twitter) of people asking "what makeup do I use" or "what's some good makeup for x substyle," so I hope this guide will provide a good response and linkable direction for these types of posts. 

I'll also be tackling some make basics, such as kuro vs shiro make,s and some dos and don'ts, so apologies in advance if this one is a bit long

So make basics

So the first thing I will always tell a baby gal is to first have a good grasp of makeup basics... aka practise basic bitch makeup please, gal requires some makeup knowledge and skill to execute nicely (at least imo). That's not to say you can't improve your makeup skills as you do, gal, but I find that if you do not have these basic skills, you will get frustrated when you struggle with the makeup and slow progress.

Now, all that being said, I guess we should start with:

Toxicc, what makeup do I buy?

Idk depends on you really... jkjk but also not really, buy what you have around and hell even dollarstore makeup will do really (tho I would advise getting something nicer but yk do what you gotta). This is the makeup I personally use:

As you can see its a right mix of brands (coz Im poor lol) but I'd say these are expanded basics (I will get into this in a bit) and as you can see I will use these till I physically cant anymore coz again poor, the only thing Id say don't do this with is mascara coz ew and lash mites or something. No, but seriously, I live by the rules of liquid max 2 months past recommended (at a push), and powders don't expire (obvi if it's mouldy or like stinky, don't use it), so money saving tip get a powder over a liquid and make sure to use that shit up. Like literally I have more shadow pallets than these and like all of them get used, and heck the purple galaxy one in the pic is like a good 6 years old lol.

Ok, but what makeup should I get?

Well, when it comes to pure basics, I'd get concealer, foundation, an eyeshadow palette with nudes and a black, mascara, eyeliner, lashes and lash glue.

Ok, let's break that list down, starting with,

Foundation and concealer: now I will always say foundation is an oxymoron in makeup as it's an optional essential coz whilst you should probably wear it if you don't like the feeling or want your skin to breathe more/have less makeup on you (trust I get it) just get 2 concealers one that is your exact skin tone and one thats like 2/3* shade lighter. Either way, you will end up with at least one concealer, and it's the lighter one which will be the foundation of your stripe.

*This is different for Kuro styles, more on this later

Eyeshadow: now if you're going for the bare essentials, just get a nude palette with a decent amount of shades, do however avoid those pallets that are like 50 million colours for like £10 coz lowkey they are awful quality and really not worth it. Now I say this partially coz a lot of gal make does use nude shadows but also coz they are universal and if you do get a good shadow pallet it will serve you as more then just eyeshadow, I've used eyeshadow as blush, contour and highlight before (heck back in 2016 I used it to set black pencil liner that I used when I couldnt find a black lipstick but I would not reccomend this) and I've seen people even use it as setting powder. I also mentioned getting a pallet that ideally has a black in it that's partially personal preference, as someone who fills my droops with black, it not only sets my droops but also smokes them out a little. If you don't plan on doing this, this is less important, but still good to have.

Type of pallet to stay away from

Type of pallet to aim for

Mascara: Lowkey, I feel like this is self-explanatory lol, I can't tell you what different types do, all mascara is the same to me, but please make sure to keep to its expiration dates.

Eyeliner: The big staple of gal makeup. Eyeliner is essential as it's what creats your eyeshape, I'd reccomend trying different types of eyeliner types (pen, gel, wand, etc) to see which one you like the most as we all have out own preferences, as an example I cannot stand pen liners with the felt tip like trips despite many gals I look up to using them, however I love by brush tip elf liner but I know many find them a fuf. Also, get a pencil liner as it will be what you use in your water line, and I honestly use it for my droop.

Lashes and glue: Now you can do a lashles make, but in my opinion gal make just isn't gal make without lashes. What you're after is manga lashes, which are easily and cheaply found on AliExpress (Alibaba in America, I believe) or tem,u and for bottom lashes, it's fair game as long as they aren't super natural looking (and please stay away from individual lashes meant for your top lid for bottom lashes). Glue-wise, it's all personal preference, but I always advise getting a clear (sometimes called white) drying glue over one that dries black. I've used both squeeze glue and one with a wand, and I'd always advise for a wand one, I find it makes life easier, especially as you can paint it onto your droop line, but a part of that might be me having very bad squeeze strength control lol.

Ok, but what about expanded basics? That's easy, you simply add:

More eyeshadow pallets: You can never have too many (says my pallet overconsumption), but seriously, build up a collection, get some pallets that speak to you.

Contour: Get a contour/bronzer. This will depend on your skin, and honestly, I don't know the magic of picking it out. I just asked the drug store workers for help lol

Blush: I would say get a little palette of different ones, but that's coz I like swapping min,e but I would stay to peachy or light pinks (see what the substyle you like uses)

Lippie: This could be lipstick, tinted gloss, or tint,s just pick what you like, but choose either a nude or pink depending on what you're going for (again, refer to your references)

Brows: Now admittingly I don't do much to my brows apart from shaping them mostly coz idk what to do with them, and they're pretty light as is, but if you do have darker brows, I'd say bleach them or shave and draw them on with product. Or leave them and shape them and do product, whatever makes you feel better, but in theory lighter, thinner brows read more gal.

Ok Toxicc, I got all that, but now what do I do?

Well, now we practice, I will always say learn the rules and then break them, seriously learn your fundamentals, I can never state that enough. Now, if you do feel comfortable with makeup, step into gal, I suggest looking up pictorials or video tutorials as I find these so much more useful, especially for beginners, than going straight into just picking a random pic and deciding to do that one. You're not gonna be perfect right off the bat, all of this shit takes practise, so don't be upset if you don't get it straight away.

A good tut is also the keystone of being set up for good things. Here's a link to a Pinterest board I've made of good tuts for y'all.

Ok, but what tut do I use?

That's a really good question actually, and it really depends on what you're aiming for as tuts will be different for each substyle/direction, just look for ones that match your direction, e.g., "Manba makeup tutorial" or for more broad something like "Soul Sister makeup tutorial". The one thing I would say is do not do a broad egg tut search, as egg really did have a tut and issue for like almost all substyles, but it's also an amazing resource for that exact thing, as it's good for getting ideas of what might be you (check out my previous posts for more on this too). No, but seriously, a good tutorial is a lifesaver, and if you are struggling with pictorials, Kawaii Pateen has some good video tuts on YouTube, just make sure to use a gal one lol.

Ok, I'm ready to start now. What tips can you give?

Yay we finally made it to actually putting makeup on, a lot of this comes down to basics knowledge (see I told you basics are important) basically tho remember your skin prep, your base is well a base, contour your face as you normally would but and it's a big BUT the nose contour changes as you wanna have a straight down contour and as opposed to a lot of mordenish makeup focus your blush more on the apples of your cheeks. I also recommend experimenting with different products as you go, try different styles of liner or different brads, a foundation brush vs a beauty blender, see what you like and don't feel pressured to like a product just coz everyone else likes it. Oh, and DO NOT USE POSCA MARKERS ON YOUR SKIN OR EYES, please, it really isn't good for you. Also, practice and I do mean practice, you don't become amazing at gal overnight.

Remember your Kuro vs Shiro makeup difrences theyre there for a reason

Ikik long heading, but it needs saying especially as I keep seeing pale ass bitches (said with love btw) trying to do (ya)manba. Now experimenting is good and amazing, but trying to do kuro (tanned/darker skin) styles seriously as a shiro (untanned/pale skin) gal is just not it. Now I know that sounds harsh, but truth always is, and the truth is a lot of the things that make kuro make styles iconic are things that are done to highlight the ta,n such as the stark white highlights under the eyes and especially on the nose. Yes, that's right, the iconic white nose stripe is a kuro thing, TikTok is shook. Shiro gals still highlight the nose (which is what the stripe is really) with lighter concealer, contour and highlighter, but it shouldn't be super pale as it just washes you out. Same with the eye makeup. But seriously, take some time after reading this and look at some makes from both shirk and kuro styles and see what differences you can see in how they apply their products. It's something I think baby gals don't do enough (myself included when I was starting). Also, remember kuro gals can do shirk styles, but shirk gals can't pull off kuro styles, so if you are naturally darker-skinned, don't feel like that puts you in a box.

Anyway, this post is getting long, and honestly, I've been procrastinating this post for about a month, so im gonna end it here, and if anything else wants to be answered, I might address it in smaller posts. Thank you for putting up with me for this lon,g y'all are champs for real.

Question for next post: What's your fav colour to use for eyeshadow

Polish word of the day: Drogeria

Meaning drugstore, not to be confused with apteka Google 

 

 Do zobaczenja <3

With thanks to Gal Revo for the Scans and Amyh for the Decome folder

Advise for baby gals part 1: CoOrds

 

Hey, welcome back,

So I've noticed in my time online that a lot of baby gals seem to ask the same questions over and over at the momen,t so I thought I'd contribute with my advice.

So what is today about?

I don't particurally want to make this a QnA per say and I have already written a kinda quick answear "can I be gal if" post and whilst my advice in that still stands and it should be followed I thought it good to do a post about topics I think deserve a bit more talking over and longer answears, so lets get into it shall we.

Where can I get gal clothes?

This question lowkey grinds my gears (Im sorry lol) as I feel like it's been talked over so much, but recently I had an interaction on Reddit with someone who thought Gal was brand-based, and it made me realise that maybe we need to talk about it more and in different ways. Now, whilst old gal brands like Dia or Alba Rosa are the holy grails, they're also old, cheapish fast fashion, and for all the talk of how Shein supposedly falls apart after 2 washes, the same is lowkey true for these 20/30 odd year old pieces. Now don't get me wrong, I'd sell my newborn for some dia pices, but these are not the end all be all and frankly for the prices they are going for it's not worth it and I highly encorage everyone to just not buy from these scalpers and let the prices fall back down (let the bubble burst frfr) coz frankly paying £100+ for a belt thats holding together by 3 threads and dry mould aint it. 

Now all that to say I do understand why we all want brand, theres nothing else quite like it esspecially in a ever more clean girl aesthetic world (or whatever the current it aesthtic is called) but the challange should spur us on more so then discourage us, at the end of the day we have ways of geting "gal coded" clothes still and honestly maybe we should just make them ourself.

That gets me nicely to my first proper point, thats actully reated to the heading (would you imagine), and that's learning to break down what we see in mags and then working with what we have. 

Now, let's do a little bit of work, shall we?

Say we wanted to recreate this hella cute outfit I found in the Co&Lu 2009 collection, what do we do if we can't find or afford all these pieces? Well, we break it down (inset gif of that Olympics woman that was super bad lol), so if we look at this outfit, what do we see? We see a yellow top (probably a tank) with a slogan detailing, a button-up shirt of some sort with logo detailing a lot of which is round, a red belt with a big buckle, acid washed disstressed jeans, Vans-like shoes, and a white and red logo cap with mesh backing, oh, and some small accessories like a weird hairtie looking braclett and a green wrist sweat band. Now, with all that broken down, we head to good ol uncle google (or whatever search engine you use) and type in your keywords and press the shopping tab, and let's see what we can find.

After some scrolling and adjusting of filters to suit my needs, I found this shirt on eBay that had similar vibes to it, and you could easily diy the red neck hole hem as well.

Now the top layer shirt.. this one is the difficult one and the one I'd say yes to buying brand of, now I culdn't find a exact match like the top so were going for the similar vibes tequnice, tho Im sure you could find a custom fabric printing service and get custom fabric Im not gonna go down that route.... however we can find fabric that kinda loosly matches the vibes like so 

Now, of course pattern is not exact, but I think a colourful poka (polka?) dot pattern will do for the purposes of this, and if you dont wanna saw or can't?

BOOM!! (This took me way too long to find) Now again it's not exact to the pic, but honestly it's the closest thing I can think of off the top of my head, and if you fancied the challenge, you could crop it too. And this is also the perfect moment to say that sometimes you just won't find something super similar to what you're looking for, and that's ok, and to be creative... now if someone can find something closer to that shirt, let a gal know.

Now Jeans are gonna be easy here coz honestly you can easily get away with different jeans, but also it's jeans iykyk go wild really and if need be look up tuts on how to distress your jeans. Now, from a quick look, and I do mean quick, I found these Shein ones that will get the job done, but honestly, as I said, any jean will imo.

Now lets quickly do shoes, these are vans/converse look alikes which means yet another easy thing to grab really, now the pattern can be a challange so for this I would reverse image search (a skill that's apparently being forgotten), so I did this and fell down the rabbit hole of vintage skate shoes, these are two I found that I liked:

Now both of these are in usd (which, if you haven't realised, I don't use lol), now for my gals outside the USA this is a good lesson in we will probably have to import way more stuff, but honestly, this is Gyaru we will all import at one point. Now obviously this is a guide that's supposedly also budget friendly and this is where I say, go get some cheap vans like and diy it, we all used to do it in the scemo scean back in my day lol and honestly these don't look too hard to diy either and even if you grow out of loving them coz they were your first attempt white vans like shoes will always be here for you to retry them.

Now, let's speed run some accessories:

BOOM, accessories done just like that, and all easy to find, could you find stuff closer to the og? Idk maybe. Will this work? Absolutely. 

Now as I've demonstrated you can easily recreat a fully brand outfit with just some simple google serches using keywoeds or reverse image search, you don't have to spend hundreds on one coord for gal and honestly you can so do gal with just stuff around you (maybe with a bit of the devil that is online shopping) I can't recommend yall enough to go to things like dollar/pound/deadstock shops for accessories esspecially as all of these shops will carry "out of date" styled things which is what gal is now unless were doing reiwa (which like 99% of us don't do), go thrift if you can and same with diy. Basically, be creative, look at non-brand shops, you might find something, and if you do find shops/brands that scream ga,l share them with us all. 

I also wanna dedicate a paragrath to my fellow plus sized gals and say that you are doing amazing and doing gal whilst plus size is not easy and do not let people bully you about doing your best with what you have available in a world that is not for us and the sad truth is that very few places make clothes for us let alone clothes that aren't grandma core and don't feel ashamed of having to go fast fashion if that's the only way for you to get things coz like I honestly get it and feel you girl. There really are bigger things to worry about than where you get your clothes from sometimes, and I like to say to not get fast fashion in gal is hypocritical anyway, since gal is consumerism 101 really lol. All to say, I love all my plus-size gals.

Now imma leave you all off with two coords you can practice this breaking down with, feel free to leave your breakdowns in the comments... Or dont Im not the boss of you lol.

Question for next post: What's a holy grail piece you managed to get your hands on?

Polish word of the day: Strój

Meaning outfit, in a lowkey formal way, but yk. Strój dnia would then mean outfit of the day.

 

 Do zobaczenja <3

With thanks to GalRevo for the Scans