If you read my Gyaru terms & vocab blog that I posted a few months ago, then you may remember a term called Ogyaru, or Ogal. If not, no worries! I'll define the term again:
Ogyaru/ogal (汚ギャル): Literally means "dirty girl"; a gal who is unhygienic
It's clearly not the nicest term, but I still think its an important term for gals to learn. However, nowadays, it's practically a dead term. I know a simple Google search is often not enough when searching for Gyaru information in the best of circumstances, but I think the sheer lack of information on Ogyaru really goes to show how archaic this really is. So, despite this setback, I'll do my best to explain a bit more about Ogyaru!
Let's start with one of my favorite depictions of Ogals:
This is taken from the book Japanese Schoolgirl Inferno: Tokyo Teen Fashion Subculture Handbook, a book dedicated to all Tokyo-based Japanese subcultures, from Sukeban to Gyaru and beyond. Most of this blog will be based on this book, as it is, by far, one of my favorite Gyaru resources. And its made even better because it touches on this ever-elusive term of ogyaru. Here, it shows a day in the life of two Ogals: sleeping in the park, not bathing, partying, and engaging in a type of compensated dating... Not exactly the healthiest or most hygienic lifestyle, right?
Ogyaru can be used to describe any gal of any substyle, but it is mostly applied to Ganguro/Gonguro, Manba, and Yamanba gals, as you can see from the pictures. The reason for this? Well... Prejudice, really.
For starters, we need to talk a bit about the rise of Ganguro/Gonguro. I talked about this forever ago in my substyles blog, so I won't go too in-depth, but Ganguro/Gonguro is one of the oldest Gyaru substyles. One of the most popular Ganguro gals, as we all know, was a gal named Buriteri. If you don't know her name, then you definitely know her face:
Buriteri was a Ganguro pioneer, and in many ways, a pioneer for the entire Gyaru subculture.
It took one person—a legendary fashion extremist named Buriteri—to take the basic idea to its next evolutionary level. In 1999 rumors began to circulate in the Shibuya underground about a girl who had created a bold new style somewhere between twisted genius and full-blown insanity. When the pioneering Gal magazine egg got wind of this mysterious figure, it dispatched camera crews into the discos to track her down like a wild animal. Naming herself after the jet-black soy sauce used to flavor yellowtail fish (buri) in teriyaki cooking (teri), Buriteri was found holding court in the Shibuya club Pylon. She strutted about in colossal platform boots that made her knockout body stand nearly six feet tall, putting her literally over-the-top. Everything about her screamed "a star is born." The egg staff immediately began using Buriteri in their photo spreads, promoting her as a revolutionary fashion icon for the strange new millennium to come.
Japanese Schoolgirl Inferno: Tokyo Teen Fashion Subculture Handbook, pages 59-60
Buriteri had 3 friends, who adopted her extreme style. One of those friends was named Mizuno, who had this to say of Buriteri:
In a retrospective on the early days of the Gonguro phenomenon for egg magazine's book Manba, she recalled, "After we first became friends, we used to meet in front of First Kitchen [a hamburger joint] on Center Street. We'd just stand around and watch people go by, sometimes for as long as twenty hours at a stretch. Eventually, we decided to put a mat on the ground and sit down. We never noticed that everyone was scared of us because of the way we looked. We were too busy trading makeup secrets"... Buriteri never showed her face without makeup. "Even when we had a sleepover party," said Mizuno, "the only thing she would take off was her eyelashes. After a shower, she would spend two to three hours in the bathroom doing her makeup. We would bang on the door if we had to go pee." To this, Buriteri would shout back, "I am too shy to show you my real face!" She said doing herself up like that was a tool to hide her true personality. She was actually really shy and inhibited.
Japanese Schoolgirl Inferno: Tokyo Teen Fashion Subculture Handbook, page 60
The shy, even downright self-conscious, Buriteri continued to rise in popularity with her Gyaru style.
...Buriteri and company, who had gotten jobs as spokesmodels for a Shibuya tanning salon called Blacky, became icons. Everyday folk who chanced upon them in the streets of Shibuya were shocked, outraged, and disgusted by their appearance. The media dubbed the black-faced girls Yamanba, a reference to an old folk tale about a hideous witch who lived in the mountains. But even as the average Gonguro was shunned, even feared, Buriteri and her gang were becoming stars in Japan. The media called them the Goguro San Kyodai ("the three blackface siblings," in parody of the popular children's song "Dango San Kyodai"). Buriteri even began to appear as a regular on a daytime chat show...
Japanese Schoolgirl Inferno: Tokyo Teen Fashion Subculture Handbook, pages 60-64
However, this popularity was not to last, and it had detrimental effects on Buriteri and her friends.
..."The media wanted to depict us as 'dirty girls,'" said Mizuno, "which was totally not true. The fact is we used to spend hours in the bathroom doing our makeup and getting ready. It took huge amounts of effort to get that look. Then there were lies that we were prostitutes, that we had AIDS. None of this was true. Because of our fashion style, none of us could find sex partners." Two of the Goguro San Kyodai were actually college students at the time. The flak they were getting from all sides, and the need to concentrate on their studies, caused them to cease all Gonguro-related activities...
...Because of a variety of factors, egg magazine itself ceased publication in 2000 (it has since resumed publication). The cover shot of the then-final issue was an unforgettable image of Buriteri looking like a Barbie doll shot from a cannon and howling like a bat out of hell. After the photo session, she took the makeup off once and for all. Newspapers like the Mainichi Daily and magazines such as Shukan Bunshun reported on the dramatic makeover. Buriteri told the latter, "Rather than because of any reaction from my family, I decided to give up the Gonguro look because of how other people saw me. I'd just be sitting down somewhere and an adult would come along and point at me, screaming out stuff like 'cockroach,' or 'How sickening!' My friends and I promised to become adults who never cared about how others felt or looked. That helped to make me really strong." Buriteri was last seen working at a clothing boutique. Her skin coloring had since shifted to the other extreme and was snow-white.
Japanese Schoolgirl Inferno: Tokyo Teen Fashion Subculture Handbook, pages 64-66
All this to say, Buriteri was practically the first Gyaru celebrity, and in turn, became the first Ogal. Of course, she wasn't actually as dirty and promiscuous as the media portrayed her, but the truth didn't matter. Buriteri, and gals as a whole, were now seen as such... Especially the Yamanba and Manba gals.
"I keep seeing what looks like an ordinary girl, but they're all really dirty," the managing editor of a community newspaper told the Japanese culture magazine Shukan Taishu. "I don't know whether it's because they haven't gone home, or simply haven't had a wash. One of them was sitting on the side of the road with her panties in full view. There was an awful brown stain on them. She just sat there, staring into thin air like a zombie."
Having blown whatever money they had on clubbing, karaoke, stuffed animals, and print-club stickers, some girls decided simply to skip out on going home to Mom and Dad. They took to living on the city streets with their fellow stinky friends, dismissing basic hygiene as a total drag. As time and resources were spent in the relentless pursuit of pleasure, the girls became dropouts, not just from school but also from the rest of society to boot. What the hell were they thinking?
These fallen angels dubbed themselves Ogals. The O derived from the Japanese character for "unclean," but adding an O to a Japanese word can also give it a double meaning, making it honorific or cute. Ogals believed they were being both dirty and adorable... even if few outside of their permanent cloud of funk ever wanted to give them a hug.
Still, the Ogals' commitment to Being Out All the Time, no matter what, acted as a kind of natural fertilizer for a new tribe of party girls dedicated to social circles and long Shibuya nights.
Japanese Schoolgirl Inferno: Tokyo Teen Fashion Subculture Handbook, page 71
Now, in a modern context, we see things differently. That image of a gal who clearly hadn't kept up with her hygiene, staring blankly into the air, seems more like untreated mental illness and perhaps even substance abuse, rather than a desire to be dirty. It seems like every conversation I have about Gyaru comes back to this, but we truly have to remember the types of people who lived the Gyaru lifestyle: They were girls who were homeless, runaways, had untreated mental illnesses, and experienced some sort of trauma. They were sex workers and sometimes suffered from alcohol and substance abuse. The only difference was that they engaged in an outrageous subculture and drew attention to themselves rather than letting the darkness they experienced consume them.
It was not uncommon for the parents of these girls to kick them out of the house. They were likely told not to return home unless they stopped being gals, which was why they elected to just sleep in the streets with their friends, who had also probably been kicked out of their homes. This, coupled with poor mental health and other problems, would have been a contributing factor to the lack of hygiene.
Of course, not all Yamanba and Manba gals were like this. After all, Buriteri's friends were college students, and Buriteri herself seemed to have some level of support from her family. I'm also sure some gals simply wanted to live a certain lifestyle, and did not experience any underlying issues.
However, we cannot ignore the number of gals who probably used Yamanba and Manba to cope. As someone who also has certain conditions and experiences, when I get into a particularly bad headspace, the first thing I begin to neglect is my hygiene. So, as someone with a certain level of experience and knowledge about both mental health and Gyaru culture, I see Ogyaru in a completely different context.
Suffice to say, the term Ogyaru is unbelievably derogatory and insensitive... But I'd be lying if it wasn't at least a little bit fun to identify with the term.
If I get particularly depressed, I tell myself that what I'm doing is "so Ogal," and usually, it gives me some motivation to wash up or clean my room. If I rewear a pair of extra crusty lashes, I call myself an Ogal. Basically, I use it as a way to cheer myself up and also give myself a boost of motivation. I'm sure a lot of the original gals probably used it in a similar fashion.
All in all, I think its okay to joke about being an Ogal. We all have times when we do gross things, whether we intend to or not. However, I think we owe a lot of respect to the original gals who would've been called ogals.
They were, at times, publicly humiliated and shamed, and no one had the foresight to ask, "Maybe there is a reason a person would live in filth?" No one had the compassion and empathy to look past their eccentric looks and continued to jeer and make fun of them, when what they should have done was offer a listening ear or a shoulder to cry on. The original gals were the children society threw away (both figuratively AND literally), but instead of helping them, they laughed at them and called them dirty and promiscuous... And that wasn't okay.
Without Ogals, we likely would not have Gyaru as we know it today.
To end this crash course, I'd like to share a TikTok by my fav goblinize (goblinize if you ever read this: ILYSM), who shares the history of Ogyaru and shares a lot of the same sentiments. They include a lot of pictures along with great information, so I recommend checking it out!
I'll go ahead and end this here! Thanks so much to everyone for being patient with the speed of my posting. I'll spare y'all the details, but redoing a house is a hell of a job... I can't wait for it to be over!!! The actual Gyaru blog should be posted sometime this week, so please look forward to it! After that blog is posted, I'll do another round of topic voting, so feel free to comment or IM me with any suggestions you may have in the meantime! Thank you so very much for reading~
Remember, Antama loves you~!
Kiss kiss~ ☆⌒ヽ(*'､^*)chu
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