Poster Gal

Poster Gal,also known as Y2K Chibi, is an aesthetic that was popular around roughly 2002 to 2013. It is often described as a more feminine and nerdier version of Olderbrothercore. Its main motifs are anime-inspired art styles and pop culture from that time period.

Visuals[]

Flash photography, usually amateur-ish. Often photos of bedrooms or selfies taken with digital cameras
Anime
Art (traditional and digital)
Pop culture references

Art style[]

The Poster Gal art style can best be described as a heavily stylized and exaggerated Chibi art style with Western animation influence. It contain distinctive features that are difficult to perfectly replicate with modern tools and techniques, such as low quality airbrush shading or visible pixels; these features contribute to the dated look of Poster Gal art. Other common features include:

Stylized animesque art style
Large feet
Connected, often simplified fingers
Exaggerated expressions
"Kawaii" imagery
Japanese letters (even though the aesthetic itself originates in the United States)
Scanned paper (if traditional)
Fangs (even for characters that do not have them)
Airbrushed/Smudge shading (if digital)
Occasionally slightly pixelated (if digital).

Poster gals would also make ID cards, which usually featured

A photo (or drawing) of themselves
A list of things they like, love, and dislike
Their birthday
Their name

Dinosaursgorawr — An example of a Poster Gal styled ID Card. Most were edited digitally, unlike this one, however.

History[]

Etymology[]

The term Poster Gal was coined in late 2023 by Shade Amburgey (NekoRikiRawrr). The name derives from how Poster Gals would cover their walls in posters, photos of their favorite actors, and fan art of their favorite characters, hence earning them the title of "poster gal".

Origin (1997-2002)[]

While the Poster Gal aesthetic originated in the late 1990s, it only got more prevalent in the early 2000s with the advent of the art-sharing website deviantART in August 2000. As sharing art on the Internet began getting easier, massive numbers of teenage artists with internet access joined the website in droves and began to post images. Most were geeks and otaku who drew in a modified anime art style that combined anime with the style of Western cartoons such as Tiny Toon Adventures or Invader Zim

Rising Popularity and Peak (2002-2013)[]

Many of the most famous artists now associated with Poster Gal joined deviantART in 2002-03, such as Brianna Garcia, a.k.a. Bri-Chan, who joined in 2003. She is considered the most notable Poster Gal artist and instantly gained a following.

Due to the success of Brianna Garcia’s works, many artists began to copy and build upon her style, eventually creating the Poster Gal art style. As NekoRikiRawrr says, “Bri-Chan was the new thing, everyone was hopping in to also make it big like she did.” While Poster Gal existed before Bri-Chan and many Poster Gal artists seemingly were not influenced by her works, Bri-Chan’s success is credited with popularizing the style and inspiring the creation of many of its most famous works, which became an aspect of the general interests of the community's geeky teenage girl audience.

Around 2004-06, Bri-Chan began to distance herself from Poster Gal art and started to explore other styles, but some of the artists who became popular during Bri-Chan’s rise in popularity and did not evolve their style still continued to use Poster Gal in their art. Eventually, Brianna Garcia got a job at Disneyland and stopped drawing Poster Gal styled art completely.

An offshoot of Poster Gal known as Kawaii Warrior began appearing in 2009, with the goal of preserving the legacy of the aesthetic. It combined a less refined Poster Gal art style with bright, colorful characters often described as “Sparkle-dogs”. Unlike the Poster Gal aesthetic, Kawaii Warrior remains prominent to this day.

Decline (2013-present)[]

By the mid-2010s, the anime trend of deviantART had begun to recede, and most of the artists associated with the aesthetic had left the website or had a evolved a different art style. While Kawaii Warrior was still prevalent, it was more common on websites such as YouTube, which is the origin of many animation memes.

Around 2023, Brianna Garcia began deleting her photos, many of which were Poster Gal artworks, before deleting her deviantART account entirely. After this, NekoRikiRawrr started her own deviantART account to archive her works. The archive ended up being banned and moved to the Web Archive in July of 2024

Music[]

Poster Gal music mostly consists of the popular alternative and rock music of the era, along with the music many deviantART users of the period listed in the 'Favorite Musician' tab of their profile. Genres commonly associated with it include:

Pop punk
Classic Rock
Post-Hardcore “emo”
Nu-Metal
Alternative Metal
Minivan Rock
Pop Rock

Bands often associated with this aesthetic include:

AFI
Alien Ant Farm
All-American Rejects
American Hi-Fi
The Ataris
The Beatles
Blink-182
Bowling For Soup
Bullet For My Valentine
Chevelle
David Bowie
Evanescence
Everclear
Fall Out Boy
Finch
Flyleaf
Fleshwater, which although wasn't around during the original popularity of Poster Gal, is still a remarkably Poster Gal band
Garbage
Goo Goo Dolls
Green Day
Hoobastank
Linkin Park
Lostprophets
My Chemical Romance
Panic! At the Disco
Papa Roach
Queen
Rammstein
Red Hot Chili Peppers
Senses Fail
Simple Plan
Something Corporate
Switchfoot
System of a Down
Taking Back Sunday
Yellowcard

Songs[]

Flagpole Sitta by Harvey Danger
Everybody's Fool by Evanescence
Apology by Alesana
Ocean Avenue by Yellowcard
I Woke Up In A Car by Something Corporate
Between Angels and Insects by Papa Roach
Easier To Run by Linkin Park
The Razor's Apple by Fleshwater
Tears Don't Fall by Bullet For My Valentine
Crawling In the Dark by Hoobastank
The Last Song by All-American Rejects
Smile In Your Sleep by Silverstein
Movies by Alien Ant Farm
A Boy Brushed Red Living In Black and White by Underoath
Miss Murder by AFI
Wings of a Butterfly by HIM
Grand Theft Autumn by Fall Out Boy
I Write Sins Not Tragedies by Panic! at the Disco
I Hate Everything About You by Three Days Grace
Until the Day I Die by Story of the Year

Fashion[]

Although poster gal does not have a distinct fashion type directly associated with the aesthetic, Poster Gals still have a noteworthy sense in fashion that does feature in their art.