In Japanese, ganguro ガングロ refers to the artificial "dark skin" that's part of some gyaru ギャル fashion styles. The term ganguro can also refer to a girl who has ganguro (dark skin).
The term ganguro doesn't refer to natural dark skin, only that acquired by artificial means: for example, by tanning in a tanning salon, or even by wearing a black foundation (makeup).
The term ganguro also doesn't mean the entire body is dark-skinned. With tanning, the whole body becomes dark-skinned, yes, but with makeup only the face becomes dark-skinned, so you have white limbs, black face, and perhaps some colored or white makeup on top of that black face.
Perhaps the dark color was chosen to increase the contrast of more vivid colors makeup and hair colors, which is why styles featuring ganguro also feature colored hair and the sort.
The term gonguro ゴングロ is a ganguro that's darker than normal.
The term bachiguro バチグロ is a ganguro is even darker than gonguro.
Some related terms:
- kasshoku hada 褐色肌
Dark-brown color skin. (natural or artificial.) - hiyake 日焼け
Tanning.
There are two theories for the origin of ganguro:
- The gan part comes from gangan ガンガン, a mimetic word meaning "vigorously."
- The gan part is the on'yomi reading of the kanji for "face," kao 顔, the body part, which is gan 顔.
In either case, the guro グロ part comes from the color "black," kuro 黒, the k turning g because of rendaku, as it's a suffix. (it definitely doesn't come from the grotesque kind of guro グロ which has nothing to do with this word.)
So the literal meaning of ganguro must be either "vigorously black" or "face-black." Sumber https://japanese-with-anime.blogspot.com/
