Yuukatan
This past week Egg, popular Japanese fashion magazine, and the bible to generations of gyaru around the world announced that its May issue would be its last. This is the latest in a string of gyaru themed magazines to fold. Eggs sister magazine, MensEGG, ceased publication last November only to be followed by the bankruptcy of Inforest Publishing just last month, which resulted in the printing of both Happie Nuts and the popular hostess magazine Koakuma Ageha to end.
While all of these magazines’ endings are a huge blow, they don’t compare to the loss that Egg represents to gyaru culture. Egg started in 1995, when gyaru was just beginning to pick up steam in Shibuya, and it was the leading force that pushed gyaru into mainstream popularity and notoriety by showcasing extreme styles such ganguro and manba. Eggs slogan, Get Wild & Be Sexy, was the battle cry of gyaru for nineteen years as these young women rebelled against the traditional beauty values of Japanese society by emulating what they saw in egg. Their war paint was tanned skin, piles of makeup, and hair dyed and bleached to outrageous colours. Though gyaru has changed tremendously over the years, Egg has always been ahead its time and remained as a style leader whether it was the extreme yamanba style of the early 2000’s to the more recent toned down kuronba style and even the casual and more sophisticated look of onee gyaru. Egg was the go-to for gyaru of every style for such a long time and was able to outlive so many of its magazine peers that it seemed it would always be able to stand the test of time.
Sadly the anthem of the original gyaru to Get Wild & Be Sexy doesn’t seem to resonate with this generation of young women in Japan and Shibuya is no longer the center of the world as it once seemed to be for fashionable young girls. The end of Egg brings up a big question- is it a sign that gyaru itself is dying, or is it the next step of the style reinventing itself?
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