Opinion / The VSCO girl trend is so hot right now even millennials are starting to feel old
She dons mom jeans and crop tops and dabs Glossier Cloud Paint on her pursed lips, but VSCO girl’s fashion sense and style is getting mocked by internet trolls
Sksksksk.
No, that’s not a keyboard smash. Nor is it a spellcheck or editing fail. That’s the way VSCO girls express their excitement. And I don’t understand it any more than you do.
If anyone had a hot girl summer in 2019, it was probably the VSCO girl. Nicknamed after the VSCO photo-editing app, the scrunchie-wearing, crop-top-clad VSCO girl has come to dominate the internet. Some VSCO girls – who are primarily teens – are popular influencers, such as Emma Chamberlain, while others are your typical high school girl on the street.
VSCO girls are “the Tumblr girls of 2019”, according to Urban Dictionary, but they’re also the evolution of the “basic bitch” millennial that took the internet by storm five years ago. VSCO girls have just traded in pumpkin spice lattes for Hydro Flask water bottles, Ugg boots for Birkenstocks and North Face jackets for oversized tees. They also love puka shell-chokers, Pura Vida bracelets, and Fjallraven backpacks.
But for all her internet stardom, the VSCO girl has also been widely criticised. She’s been buzzed about since Lauren Strapagiel of BuzzFeed News reported on her in July, subsequently appearing everywhere from The New York Times to The Cut. Several Instagram accounts aggregating photos of the #VSCOgirl aesthetic have popped up, and the VSCO girl has fallen victim to countless memes and YouTube parody videos.
The VSCO girl makes me feel old
While the internet loves to hate on the VSCO girl, I don’t.
But she is the first Gen Z trend that makes me, a millennial, feel old. I’m 27, born in 1991, and I'm so separated from Gen Z that the VSCO girl has never appeared on my Instagram feed. And when I told my millennial friends I had been writing articles about VSCO girls, they said: “What’s a VSCO girl”?
I even had to Google “how to pronounce VSCO girl”. (If anyone knows, please email me.)
Not to mention that scrolling through the accounts of popular VSCO girls such as Summer McKeen and Sydney Serena makes me feel inherently uncool, even though I’m well aware that’s half the point. How are these teenagers so much more effortless-looking than I was at their age (or ever will be)?