The final bell rings. A girl shuffles through the hallway, clutching her key chain tightly in her hand. Last time her key chains jingled around, her friends around her giggled and called her a “VSCO girl.” She doesn’t realize it yet, but this is the same reason why she stopped drinking coffee from Starbucks, and the same reason why she stopped wearing the fluffy boots she saved up weeks worth of her allowance for in middle school. 

The way someone dresses has always been a place for judgment from others, but since the era of the internet, more opportunities have come to push these judgments even further. Girls have an even harder time trying to just be alive with interests. There is always some excuse to make fun of girls. 

VSCO girls are made fun of for wearing large t-shirts and drinking from expensive water bottles, and before them it was e-girls with chains and dyed hair, and before e-girls it was basic white girls, and it just never really seems to stop. This distaste for girls expressing themselves is exhausting. Jokes stop being fun when repeated over and over, and this trend of labeling girls is doing just that. 

Boys and men do get some of this treatment as well in some cases; but in others, they are praised for following the same trends as girls. The same labels used to make fun of girls is instead often used to uplift boys. E-boys are attractive, and e-girls are trying too hard.

It’s the same style, and the same trend. So that brings the question to the table, is this about the trends being harmful or embarrassing for the user… or is this really about something else?

The labels people put on e-girls, or that other people put on them, do not define who they are. Using a label to create a negative character out of someone is just an easy way out from feeling guilty about their judgment. 

But at the end of it all, all these girls are really doing is dressing and following harmless trends. Since when does that make a person worthy of being laughed at? 

It never has, and never should be. 

We pretend like we are laughing at a trend, try to nit-pick flaws into them; but all anyone is really doing is laughing at girls, and getting away with it. It’s time to reconsider if their struggle with expression is really a noble fight.