THE 2/3 RULE

You cannot be a gyaru without makeup; this is a fundamental of gyaru culture. Gyaru is a fashion-based subculture characterised by bold appearances, makeup, and style. And sometimes I feel this is a fact that a lot of baby gals neglect. 

I've seen people say "You can be gyaru with just makeup" or "all you need to be gyaru is just makeup", and although this is true to an extent, I feel this is an idea that is very lazy and shallow. Gyaru is a fashion-based culture, and like your makeup, different elements come together to create your look and make you gal. And this coordination of your appearance is essential to the lifestyle of gyaru. Gyaru is, without a doubt, a high-maintenance lifestyle that requires a level of self-care and effort. From putting on your makeup, doing your hair, party culture, socialising, to resetting, removing your makeup, and taking care of yourself physically and mentally.

And to truly embody gyaru, you need to be putting effort into all parts of your appearance, not just your makeup.

I've seen some people wonder why they dont get called a gyaru by the community, despite doing the makeup, whilst they're doing much more simplistic makeup styles. The thing is, although the makeup is gyaru to an extent, when doing simplistic makeup you are expected to compensate with another element of your appearance.

For example, when you look at old magazine scans of old school or amuro gyaru, despite them having minimal makeup, they still appear gyaru because their appearances were balanced out by deep tans, bleached, styled hair and flashy coords. Essentially, if you are unable to do an element of your appearance, you must compensate with another. The minimal old school gyaru look rides heavily on deeper tans to look gyaru, otherwise, it will appear as just normal conventional makeup.

There are three central elements when it comes to your appearance:

1. HAIR

Hair refers to whether you style your hair or not, whether it's bleached, you're using wigs, etc, this focuses on styled hair. Such as sujimori, buns, ponytails, sakage, curls, waves, etc. 

To be missing this element would just mean having unstyled or simple hairstyles. 

2. MAKEUP

 Makeup is, well, your makeup. But this also includes how you plan to complement your makeup with your skin tone (whether you're shiro or kuro).

To be missing this element would just mean having a more simplistic makeup style. This could be lashless makeup (unless your kuro gyaru doing panda eyes), no lenses or missing elements of your makeup that make it less striking. 

3. COORD 

 Coord is your full outfit coordination. From your clothes, accessories and your nails, your outfit is a coordination of different pieces or sets that come together to compliment eachother. Often you can find different coords in magazines. When discussing substyles, substyles often refer to the clothing trends of different time periods and the categorisation of them.

To be missing this element would just mean having a much more simplistic coord. 

I created this rule for myself called the 2/3 rule. Where to be recogniseably gyaru, you must have a minimum of two elements of the three elements I previously explained. This rule isnt essentially a commandment of some sort, but rather a guide. I intiailly made this rule to help baby gals understand that being gyaru is not confined in only doing your makeup, and to be gyaru you must be putting effort into the entirety of your appearance. You can of course neglect this rule and it is definitely important to form your skills of doing your makeup, and people can pull off doing ONLY their makeup, but for baby gals this would be a difficult approach.

Do what you can, of course and dont force yourself to splurge on random clothing peices, but I merely hope to enlighten, not to neglect other elements of your appearance.

I found this rule especially helpful when I was a baby gal myself, I didn't have much clothes at the time so I compensated using wigs, tanning and makeup! 

I hope this helps !