The “VSCO GIRL” Trend

By: Sophia Clark

Introduction

In 2019, a new online persona known as the "VSCO girl" rapidly spread across social media platforms, capturing attention with its distinctive aesthetic and lifestyle. Named after a photo editing app, the trend became more than just a look and reflected specific ways of performing girlhood in the digital age. While many dismissed it as superficial or annoying, the VSCO girl trend offers a valuable way to examine how girls use social media to shape their identities and values, build community, and participate in cultural trends.

The VSCO girl trend reveals how aesthetics, lifestyle, and values (especially around privilege, femininity, and consumerism) can be packaged into a digital identity that, depending on how the trend is interpreted or satirized online, both empowers and limits girls.

Understanding the Significance

To better understand the significance of the VSCO girl trend, it is helpful to consider the interdisciplinary field of Girlhood Studies. As defined by Pomerantz (2020, p. 846), "Girlhood studies is a multidisciplinary field of inquiry into the lives, experiences, and cultural practices of people who identify as girls, as well as an examination of how girls are discussed and represented in popular and academic venues." This field helps us understand how girls actively shape their identities, especially in digital spaces where trends like the VSCO girl emerge and evolve.

By analyzing the VSCO girl trend through the lens of Girlhood studies, we can see how this isn't just another teenage obsession, but rather a complex cultural phenomenon through which girls can navigate identity, belonging, and self-expression in the digital age.

History and Description

The VSCO girl social media trend emerged in early 2019, taking place during a time when teen-led climate activists were viral, influencer culture was skyrocketing, and a growing obsession with digital self-branding was shaping how girls expressed identity and values online.

The name came from the VSCO photo editing application, which teenage girls loved to use for its filters that created a cohesive, beachy, laid-back aesthetic. By mid 2019, the term "VSCO girl" had evolved beyond the app to describe a specific style worn mostly by white, middle-class, teenage girls across social media platforms like Tiktok, Instagram, and Youtube.

VSCO girls were known for their oversized t-shirts, scrunchies, Hydroflasks covered in stickers, Birkenstocks, metal straws, and eco-conscious slogans like “save the turtles,” all of which contributed to their effortless and beachy cool look. This carefully crafted aesthetic not only defined VSCO girl's physical appearances, but also played a pivotal role in shaping their personal identities.

Digital Identity and Aesthetics

In examining the VSCO girl trend through the lens of digital identity formation, it becomes clear that aesthetics play a key role in self-expression and community-building in online spaces. Ajmal (2024, p. 5) explains that youth subcultures provide "necessary resources and niche social structures for this ongoing identity work, offering narrative, styles, and practices that young people can adopt and adapt," which is directly applicable to the VSCO girl trend.

By personalizing their identities, adapting the aesthetic to reflect their values, tastes, and aspirations while simultaneously connecting with a larger online community that shares similar interests and cultural cues. However, this process of self-expression and community-building also reveals how these identities are being turned into a product that can be bought and sold, leading to the rise of consumer culture.

The VSCO girl phenomenon connects to a larger pattern where girlhood itself becomes something that can be packaged, marketed, and sold back to girls. Palmer (2024) calls this concept "Consumercore," where digital aesthetics like the VSCO girl can turn girlhood into a consumable brand where identity and consumption become inseparable.

While the trend can seem harmless at first glance, it is shaped by capitalist ideals, racialized beauty standars, and performative femininity. Teen girls are encouraged to define themselves through expensive products like Hydro Flask water bottles and Birkenstocks, creating a cycle of identity linked to consumption. Additionally, this commodification excludes those who cannot afford the "necessary" products to fit into the label, highlighting issues of privilege, race, and class. This intersection of privilege with environmental consciousness reveals how digital trends can reproduce real-world inequalities while appearing inclusive and values-driven.

Environmentalism or Performance?

The VSCO girl trend promotes a "green" image through its emphasis on eco-friendly products like reusable Hydro Flask water bottles and metal straws, but the reality contradicts the environmental values they are meant to represent. As Gregg (2021) points out, the VSCO girl trend highlights the tension between environmentalism and performative activism, where the act of buying eco-products becomes more about showcasing one's values than making a meaningful impact.

Despite the surface level focus on sustainability, the privilege required to afford these products underscores the discriminatory aspects of this "climate friendly" facade. This tension between self-expression and commercialized identity raises questions about the authenticity of the values the trend promotes, particularly when it comes to environmentalism and social responsibility.

Surveillance and Authenticity

The VSCO girl trend not only commodified girlhood but also intensified the pressures girls face to conform to curated online identities. Akane Kanai (2015) discusses how girls' online spaces function as postfeminist structures of surveillance, where self-surveillance becomes a form of discipline and control. This environment makes girls constantly feel the need to monitor and regulate their digital selves to align with ideal standards of femininity.

The VSCO girl aesthetic, with its emphasis on specific products and behaviors, became a model for belonging in digital communities. This created a paradox where girls were encouraged to express individuality while all wearing the same set of accessories, leading to a conflict between expressing themselves and feeling pressured to fit in.

Dynamics like these reflect broader postfeminist discussions that position girlhood as an ongoing mission of self-improvement (Kanai, 2015), often at the expense of genuine self-expression. As a result, the VSCO girl trend illustrates how digital platforms can simultaneously offer spaces for girls to explore their identities, but also where they feel watched and pressured to present a certain image.

From Trend to Meme

Within just a few months, the VSCO girl trend eventually became a subject of irony and parody in online culture. However this demonstrates yet another pattern in digital youth culture, as Koc (2025) observes, internet aesthetics move through predictable "cycles of irony, nostalgia, and commodification." The VSCO girl trend represents this process. What began as a sincere aesthetic choice for many teenage girls rapidly transformed into an object of mockery, with exaggerated performances becoming more common than authentic expressions of the identity.

This transformation reflects what Koc (2025) terms the "post-hipster effect," where today's youth culture often uses irony and emotional detachment as a response to overwhelming online spaces. The VSCO girl aesthetic also demonstrates Koc's (2025) concept of "memetic aesthetics," which he defines as repetitive, shareable online visuals that function as collective shorthand for complex identity positions.

The visual markers of VSCO girl identity, such as scrunchies, Hydro Flasks, and shell necklaces became so widely recognized that they could function as immediate signifiers in memes, TikTok's, and other content formats. This memetic evolution reveals a significant pattern in contemporary digital culture: the increasingly shortened timeline between sincere adoption and ironic distance.

By fall 2019, just months after the trend gained mainstream visibility, the majority of VSCO girl content online had already shifted toward parody rather than authentic participation. It's becoming a common characteristic of digital youth cultures, where subcultures lose their edge as they're quickly commodified and recycled for mass consumption.

Perhaps most interestingly, even self-identifying VSCO girls began incorporating elements of self-mockery into their content, simultaneously embracing and poking fun at the stereotypes associated with their aesthetic choices. This self-awareness reflects the tension within digital girlhood, where girls navigate the pressures of conforming to dominant femininity while simultaneously reclaiming and reshaping their identities in ways that reflect both empowerment and commodification.

Significance to Girls' Culture

The VSCO girl trend provides valuable insights into girls culture, particularly in how dominant femininity shapes digital identity. As Gonick (2020) argues, girlhood is socially constructed and influenced by race, class, culture, and power dynamics, all of which are reflected in the VSCO girl aesthetic. This trend reflects Gonicks (2020, p. 854) analysis of "Girls as Saviors of the Collective Future," where the complexities of girls' lives, interest, and ambitions are expressed through their engagement with digital spaces and trends, often navigating the tension between empowerment and consumerism.

While the VSCO girl aesthetic promotes environmental values, it ultimately reinforces traditional gender expectations around appearance and consumption, increasing the contradictory pressures placed on girls to be both relaxed and perfectly put together.

The VSCO girl phenomenon shows how girls actively create meaning and identity within systems that try to limit them to narrow definitions of girlhood. As Gonick (2020) points out, while girls are influenced by "race, class, culture, and power dynamics" and "institutions like schools, media, and families," they aren't just passively accepting these influences but are "actively negotiating, resisting, and reimagining what girlhood means" (pp. 852-853).

Pomerantz (2020) makes a similar point about the importance of recognizing girls' "agency and resistance" while avoiding approaches that "reinforce stereotypes" or "reduce their complexity." The VSCO girl trend demonstrates this complex dynamic as participants both embraced the popular aesthetic choices while also making them their own and using them to build community on their own terms.

Conclusion

The VSCO girl trend wasn't just about scrunchies and Hydro Flasks, it revealed the complicated reality of how teenage girls create identity and community in digital spaces. Throughout its lightning-fast lifecycle from genuine self-expression to ironic meme, the trend showed how aesthetics, lifestyle, and values get packaged into recognizable templates that both help and hinder girls' self-expression.

The VSCO girl identity offered ways for girls to connect through shared environmental values and aesthetic choices while simultaneously creating barriers through expensive requirements and exposing participants to judgment and mockery. What struck me most was how quickly something created by and for teenage girls transformed from a legitimate identity to a punchline, reflecting the broader pattern of dismissing girls' interests as trivial or inauthentic compared to those of boys or adults.

Looking beyond the specific elements of the trend, the VSCO girl phenomenon gives us important insights into how girls navigate digital spaces and form identities within commercial systems that both enable and constrain them. By examining this trend through girlhood studies, we can appreciate the complex balance between agency and constraint that characterizes girls' experiences online.

The patterns revealed by the VSCO girl phenomenon, such as rapid commodification, the tension between authentic expression and performance, and the cycle from celebration to mockery, help us understand the contradictory messages girls receive as they form identities online. The VSCO girl may have faded as a trend, but what it reveals about digital girlhood remains relevant as girls continue to carve out spaces for self-expression and community even as their cultural productions face devaluation and their identities become commodified. In this ongoing negotiation between empowerment and limitation, girls demonstrate remarkable creativity and resilience as they shape what it means to grow up in an increasingly digital world.

References

Ajmal, S. (2024). Charting Youth Subcultures, Identity Formation, and Niche Aesthetics in the Age of Social Media. Journal of English Literature and Cultural Studies, 5(1), (pp. 22-29). https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Sharmien-Ajmal/publication/384291437.pdf

Gonick, M. (2020). Girls. The SAGE Encyclopedia of Children and Childhood Studies (pp. 852-855). SAGE Publications.

Gregg, M. (2021). Girlhood in the Great Outdoors. Silicon Valley Sociological Review, 19(1), 9. https://scholarcommons.scu.edu/svsr/vol19/iss1/9.

Kanai, A. (2015). Thinking beyond the Internet as a Tool: Girls' Online Spaces as Postfeminist Structures of Surveillance. In J. Bailey & V. Steeves (Eds.), eGirls, eCitizens (pp. 83–106). University of Ottawa Press. https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt15nmj7f.7.

Koc, A. (2025). "Is The Scene Still alive?": Post-Hipster Affect, Memetic Aesthetics, and the Crisis of Subcultural Authenticity. Cultural Critique, 126(1), (pp. 129–159). University of Minnesota Press. https://doi.org/10.1353/cul.2025.a951012.

Palmer, A. (2024). Consumercore: The Girl Commodification and Girl Romanticization of Girl Self Because Girl Internet Said So (thesis). Ohio University Honors Tutorial College. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ouhonors1715431975437122.

Pomerantz, S. (2020). Girlhood studies. In D. T. Cook (Ed.), The SAGE Encyclopedia of Children and Childhood Studies, (pp. 846–850). SAGE