Ganguro is a Japanese fashion trend popularized in the 1990s by young women, featuring tanned skin, blonde or orange hair, and black and white eyeliner. The extreme forms of the style, called yamanba or manda, use more accentuated makeup and shiny or metallic jewelry. Ganguro challenges traditional concepts of Japanese beauty and is seen as rebellious and outrageous by many Japanese.
Ganguro is a Japanese fashion trend that began in the 1990s. This style features tanned skin with blonde or orange hair and is generally followed by young women. Ganguro literally translates to “blackface,” and some experts posit that the trend stemmed from Japan’s fascination with black icons like 1990s-era women like Janet Jackson and Naomi Campbell.
In addition to sporting a tan with orange or blonde hair, ganguro girls attribute themselves to a particular makeup style. The fashion trend calls for the use of black and white eyeliner, with black eyeliner closer to the eye and white around the black outline. False eyelashes or heavy use of mascara are also popular. Many practitioners of the ganguro style wear white lipstick and pastel eye shadow.
The extreme forms of this style, called yamanba or manda, use more accentuated makeup. White makeup around the eye is heavier, and there is often a white line across the bridge of the nose. In yamanba, the white eyeshadow is only above the eye, but the mandatory fashion also requires the eyeshadow under the eye. It is also popular to place shiny or metallic jewelry on the cheeks or around the eyes.
Ganguro girls prefer brightly colored clothing with platform shoes, usually sandals or boots. Tie-dyed sarongs or miniskirts are also popular in this fashion trend. Vinyl or plastic fabrics are preferred. To accessorize, ganguro girls wear multiple bracelets, statement necklaces, and fake hibiscus flowers in their hair.
Followers of this fashion trend also pay special attention to their nails. Ganguro nails should be long or fake with shiny polish. Three-dimensional nail art is popular, as are glittery appliqués and stickers.
The ganguro style challenges traditional concepts of Japanese beauty. Conventional Japanese fashion does not condone ganguro practices. Ganguro is seen as rebellious and outrageous by many Japanese, and the style has not spread to other cultures to any great extent. Some researchers see the style as a way to act against the restrictions of Japanese society.
At the beginning of the fashion trend, one of the biggest ganguro icons was Buriteri. She was a model who appeared in ads for a tanning salon in a fashion magazine. Negative comments in the mainstream Japanese press eventually led Buriteri to shed the ganguro look.
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