Bodies in American Culture, Fall 2019: Embodying the VSCO Girl, the Ideal Woman-in-Training

When considering an ideal woman, there is an assumption that what is needed to create that picture requires effort, and lots of it. Makeup, certain clothes, hairstyles, waking up at zero-dark-thirty to look just so. Why do we decide to look this way? Why do we decide to even subscribe to the ways of the ideal woman when we are unsure of where, how, or even why we should try to embody it? The answer is pretty simple: technology. Rebecca Jennings of the Guardian gives the best description of the ideal woman, and how she literally "looks like an Instagram – which is to say, an ordinary woman reproducing the lessons of the marketplace" (Jennings 2019).

Technology is basically a walking advertisement - scrolling through Facebook and Instagram and advertisements that conveniently look a lot like your recent viewing history, Snapchat pushes channel subscriptions that advertise products and clothes and jewelry, PlanetFitness ads between stories of fresh baked goods, post-workout shots in front of gym mirrors, and lazy "treat yourself" days in bed. A technological whiplash is experienced by users every single day with every single post, as authenticity is blended with reminders that, even though you're trying, you don't look quite expensive enough. There has always been an assumption that there must be a certain appearance and price tag to get to this certain point, but now a new kind of consumer and woman-in-training is emerging: I give you, ladies and gentlemen, the VSCO girl.

Based upon the 2012 photo-editing app/"Instagram draft folder," VSCO is the workshop of young women and girls whose goal revolves around the ambiguously enticing "aesthetic" (Jennings 2019). But what makes the VSCO girl aesthetic different can best be described by not what is said, but by what is seen, in this case in the aptly titled "VSCO Girl Starter Pack."

Everything you need to become a VSCO girl, according to...?

Depicted as "effortless," all of the above items are casual, pedestrian objects that most people have either seen or have access to (largely to technology and advertising, of course). However, all of these items are quite expensive as well in how leisurely they are, which is precisely what is at the "VSCO Girl" core, and how dangerous it can be. The way in which the VSCO girl is "showcasing herself at leisure is either the bulk of her work or an essential part of it," and "the look is at once expensive to achieve and laid-back in practice" (Tolentino 2019, Jennings 2019). It takes a lot of work to make sure that you have exactly the right tie-dye shirt that matches your scrunchies, and how do thin strap v. thick strap Birkenstocks impact how you look? And what happens if the messy bun that you've spent the last twenty minutes making still doesn't look quite right for the Tik Tok you're about to create? So it goes in the mind of the VSCO girl.

Now, what does the VSCO girl reveal about ourselves? Just like her "basic" predecessors of the mid-2000's and 2010's, the VSCO girl falls into a space of trying so hard and putting such effort into appearing effortless, and they ultimately are scrutinized for it. We have watched this occur over and over again for decades, and they always seem to fizzle out with time as the next big craze is coming down Google's highway. However, how the VSCO girl came to be all over our culture continue to be become faster and more influential with each Instagram influencer and specialized advertisement that pops up on our feeds. Maybe we ought to put our laptops and phones and tablets and smart watches down for a bit, and just talk about it. In fact, we really should. Or else the VSCO girl or one of her siblings will tether itself permanently into the ever impressionable mind of the teenage girl, and will be there to stay through adolescence, womanhood, and beyond.