In the past few months, there has been an endless taunting of the newly coined “VSCO girl,” a recent trend of fashion that has risen among teenage girls. If someone is a “VSCO girl” they wear scrunchies on their wrist, own a Hydro Flask decorated with quirky stickers, and say certain words or phrases. 

If you were to search up the hashtag “VSCO girl” on Twitter right now, hundreds of tweets mocking these girls would come up. However, this taunting is somewhat baffling, considering the fact that these teenage girls haven’t done anything to warrant such ridicule. 

The truth behind the endless mocking is much bigger than this particular trend. Our culture has been mocking teenage girls and women long before “VSCO girls,” and this is in no way a new trend. 

If you want another fairly recent example we can look back at 2014 when everyone loved to make fun of Pumpkin Spice Lattes and UGG boots. After these two items became trendy among young women and teenage girls, they became the butt of every joke for years to come. To this day, nearly five years later, PSLs and UGGs are considered to be “basic,” a word on the internet that is connotated with being plain or even stupid. 

We can even look back to the 60s, when Beatlemania swept through Britain and the United States. Despite having millions of fans and record-breaking singles, The Beatles weren’t taken seriously in The United States until Life Magazine declared them to be the next big thing. Before the magazine article, they were seen to be a mindless, trendy band, and were even mocked, for their primarily female fan base. That’s right, The Beatles, arguably one of the biggest bands of the 20th century, were at first dismissed because of their prime demographic of women. 

This pattern of deriding women for harmless trends in fashion or pop culture has been going back decades, and quite frankly, it’s ridiculous. What is our culture’s inherent need to belittle the interests of teenage girls and women? Why has this jeering become a repeating pattern that can be traced back to so many aspects of our culture? 

It seems as though women can’t do anything without being mocked. We can’t listen to certain bands, we can’t wear certain shoes, we can’t buy certain water bottles. It’s absurd. So until our culture changes, I propose a new solution for all girls: Let’s stop listening to the teasing and mockery. 

Keep using your Hydro Flasks, drink those lattes, Instagram your sunsets, keep up with whatever harmless trend you like, and do it shamelessly. Be unapologetic in that of which you love, and do so in spite of those telling you to stop. In a society that mocks women for anything and everything they choose to enjoy, being remorseless can be revolutionary.