Hey, welcome back,
New year, new advice for baby gals. originally I was gonna focus part 3 on hair to get the trifecta done, but if Im honest, I suck at styling my hair, so im probably not the best to write about it lol.
So instead, let's talk substyles. I know I see a lot of questions and discussions about them all the time, so I feel like this might be useful to y'all in some way or another. Let's get started.
So what are substyles?
Fake lol. Well not really, but I see people often think substyles are equivalent to what would be the distinctions between Goth, Emo and scene (and more but yk) which gives the wrong impression that these things are super seprate and exclusive to themselves when this really isn't the case, the only distinction in gal that sorts anything is the Kuro/Shiro "divide". Substyles were honestly just trends, just like how clean girl or office siren are trends, that's literally all. You can track this history through egg honestly, and we even talk about this without realizing talking about how yamanba was popular in the early days or how himekaji and onee were later styles in the og gal lifecycle, we see models switch styles as the trends progressed, and are we shocked? Gal was always about staying trendy and yourself its why gal is so widespread as a style.
Now to say every gal ever did every style would be a lie, there were gals doing older styles all the time and even now coz well that's who they were, same as not all gals enjoyed the same activities, whilst a hime gal might sterotypically enjoy going to get cakes and tea for example an ora ora gal might enjoy going to car race tracks or be riding in motercycle gangs, but obviously these activities werent for one gal and not the other.
So, wait, if substyles are fake, what does that mean?
Not much really lol. They still work the same, really; the only thing that should change is how much reverence substyles get. Substyes aren't a box and never should have been viewed as such, don't put yourself in a box, experiment, if you wanna wear tsuyome one day and ane the other do it. Gals in general (at least in Japan) never used substyles like the boxes we seem to treat them like, they wouldn't really use it as "Im agejo gyaru" but more so a "Im gyaru. im dressed agejo today." basically youre gyaru or you're not. Like, I don't want to break y'all's hearts or anything, but some substyles aren't even particularly gal-made, just gal-absorbed, like hime(kaji), for example.
Wait, what do you mean hime(kaji) isn't gal?
Well, that's the way gal works? it absorbes the trends around it, that's why we do have all these trends in gal, gals originally did really just dress trendy in one way or another, or how they wanted thats why you see people harping on and on about your makeup all the time, makeup makes, or breaks gal, all gal make follows the same rules. But this isn't a make post, but please keep that in mind.
Like, look at this photo. Not gal right. But imagine her with more of a gal hair and make.... all of a sudden I'd argue she'd very much match at least my image of a Hime (kaji) look.
Sorry, can't find op
Same with this outfit, this is himekaji just without the gyaru. You can see more examples of this here. Many of these gyaru substyles have a life of their own outside of gal, they have also evolved outside gal, which brings me round to;
Don't let substyles dictate you, let gal evolve
Long heading aside, I mean it: substyles have dictated Gaijin (lowkey mostly English-speaking) gyaru communities for a bit too long. There is nothing wrong with loving the Heisei trends in gal, hell, most of us fell in love with gal due to them, and its ok to still dress in them, but that doesn't mean that's all we have to do. This obsession has led to so many evolutions in gal to be labeled as not gal enough or not gal, like Reiwa gals weren't considered gal, at some point, even Cgals not being considered gal. We're scared of letting gal evolve past what we first loved in it, and I get it, I really do. If I could compare, I feel like many veterans of the time and many experienced gals view it the same as a parent watching their child grow up, it's scary, but it's natural and needed, we cant let gal stagnate forever or we will forever be in the loop we are now (tho hopefully if my predictions are right we are exitting) where we have no clothes that are accessible to 99% of gals, we'll forever be paying hundreds for dry rotted belts held togther by a thread or a piss smelling smoke stained coat. Im not saying we aren't allowed to still want these like hell I'd kill for one of my dream colourway alba coats, but we deserve better then this as a community, we deserve new clothes, we deserve clothes that fit and aren't falling apart, we shouldn't have to diy everything, and we shouldnt be forced to buy from shein when all else fails, we deserve new brands and trends.
What Im trying to say to you, dear reader, is experiment, let gal evolve and be the reason it is evolving. Find new shops, find new trends for gal to absorb, take the old trends and evolve them, look and encourage new gals and the Reiwas and Cgals, stay true to gal and be trendy and yourself, don't force yourself into imaginary boxes, don't let the trends of all stiffle you into something you feel is cookie-cutter, and who knows, maybe youll find a trend others wanna follow and do what so many wanted to do and creat the mythical new substyle. But, and this is a big but, more than anything, have fun, be wild, and be sexy.