Now that VSCO girls are considered a little passé, my granddaughter—a young, relatively unsophisticated teen—has picked up on the fad and is using it to torment me on the first hot days of late spring. “Dalma (her name for me), are you trying to be a VSCO girl?” Ella smirked. “What is a VSCO girl?” I asked, not knowing whether to be offended. “Short shorts, long shirt, scrunchies . . . VSCO girl,” was her cryptic reply. I went to the internet and looked up the term.
The look we adopted in the early ‘60s involved wearing a trench coat over Bermuda shorts, and it didn’t have a snappy title. We just thought it cool to look like we were only wearing underwear or, perhaps more titillating, nothing at all under that short raincoat. The difference is that this new look has exploded into a viral marketing strategy, and someone is getting rich. No one got rich from our attempts to look seductive on campus in Miami sixty years ago. We didn’t have the internet, social media, memes, and mass marketing back then.
The French writer Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr is quoted as saying, “Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose,” which translates as, “The more things change, the more they remain the same.” Alternatively, we can take heart in my mother’s practical advice: Don’t throw away your old clothes; they will be fashionable again eventually!
Carole J. Garrison 