Image via Pikdo
Step aside Instagram baddie. A new type of girl has been introduced to our screens, and it’s the VSCO girl. Characterized in social media by their scrunchies, excessive sunset pictures, shell necklaces and Hydro Flasks, VSCO girls have become known on the web as the basic girls of 2019. Over the last couple of months, the term has become all the rage on social media sites. On YouTube, countless numbers of videos have been released providing tutorials on how to be VSCO girls. On TikTok, parodies of these girls have gotten up to 265 million views.
At first when I saw the term VSCO girl, I didn’t think much of it. It wasn’t until a friend made a comment about me being one of these girls that I started to think. I was standing in my room. Birkenstocks on my feet, scrunchie on my wrist, Fjällräven Kånken on my back, and reusable Starbucks water bottle in my hand as my friend proceeded to say “oh you’re such a VSCO girl”. I laughed at the moment, but that night as I looked up the term and scrolled through news articles and posts on social media, I was annoyed. Annoyed because due to my choices in clothing, footwear, and accessories, I had been labeled and mocked.
VSCO girls have become a big joke. But there is so much more to the app VSCO than Hydro Flasks and shell necklaces.
Image via Business Insider
VSCO is short for Visual Supply Company, and it is a photo editing app. This app allows users to capture photos and videos and edit them through filters and other editing tools. Users can then take their photos and post them to their profile. People then can show their appreciation for posts either through favoriting the post or through reposting it to their collection. VSCO does not keep track of how many likes or republishes a post gets, only the one who posted knows that information.
I have been an avid user of the app for over five years, and there is a beautiful community that is hidden in all the scrunchies and sunsets. VSCO is where I learned how to edit photos. It is where all the pictures I am scared to post on Instagram go. It is where girls build up girls through republishes and comments. It is free of popularity seeing that there is no track of follower count and likes. All the selfies that I am not confident in go on my profile. My VSCO collection holds everything from my favorite quotes to the cutest pictures of dogs. VSCO is so much more than a world of Birkenstocks, tube tops, and pink drinks. It is so much more than “the basic girl of 2019”. VSCO is my safe space. It is a place where people can be uniquely themselves in a space where no one chooses to judge, even if that includes watching the sunset with scrunchies on their wrist.