When Was the Last Time You Met a Valley Girl?
Featured image credit: Warner Bros.
Does the term “valley girl” still hold meaning in a post-internet, post-9/11, post-COVID, post-MAGA America? So many enormous events have changed the trajectory of American culture that the consumer-driven cheerleading voices of youth that once peppered John Hughes movies and Bret Easton Ellis novels seem like an innocent artifact of a bygone era. Want to cruise the mall? You might as well ask if you want to grab a malted after the sock hop. The valley girls have been relegated to the Twilight Zone… a glossy, bubbly, hot pink memory rapidly bleaching into faded obscurity under the never-ending California sunshine.
Or are they still here among us, camouflaged in the costumes of our zeitgeist, still endlessly expounding and consuming, unconcerned with whether or not the world flourishes or burns?
A Debt to Cato Hernández
I almost completely abandoned this blog post when I came across Cato Hernández’s meticulously researched, beautifully written, and insightful article for LAist entitled “Think you know the origins of the ‘Valley Girl’ accent? Like OMG, as if!” After reading it, I just felt like there wasn’t anything for me to add to the conversation. The LAist article effectively dropped the mic on any discourse about valley girls in the mid-2020s and beyond. I highly recommend reading her piece for the LAist for an in-depth understanding of that slippery yet simultaneously unmistakable valley girl accent. It’s eye-opening… perhaps ear-opening, as well?
But as a child of the 1980s, valley girls were a very real part of my life, even growing up on the other side of the country in Southwest Florida. They were as much an introduction to California culture as the Beach Boys. Through those formative years, I counted several girls among my friends who could satisfy multiple criteria of the valley girl standard.
Yet, as a red-blooded American male, I also fell into some of the pitfalls of prejudice, using the valley girl stereotype as a vehicle to voice sexism and gender-focused ridicule, while simultaneously elevating these bleach-blonde caricatures to unwilling sex symbols. So, I thought there were still important reasons to continue exploring the topic, if even to get just a few more eyes on it.
Je Suis Valley
To my knowledge, the “Valley” that the Valley Girl term referenced was undoubtedly the San Fernando Valley. So, I was surprised to learn that valley girls weren’t (or aren’t?) really a region-specific phenomenon. In her article, Hernández refers to a Reseda-based Valley Girl Contest from the summer of 1982 in which the winner originated from La Verne in the San Gabriel Valley. This elicited a disclaimer from one of the judges: “Valley girls are from everywhere.”
And if you’re anchoring the Valley Girl term to a hyper-emphasized accent, then there may be something to that. At the height of its popularity, the accent could be heard across California… even in other parts of the country.
The California Sound
So much of the valley girl archetype is anchored in its mysterious accent; a distinction at once exuding authoritative confidence and impermeable casualness while almost exclusively terminating in a dramatic, upward-facing inflection in militant devotion to upspeak. Some have posited that its roots are in Malibu surf culture (see the iconic yoke around Sean Penn’s early career, Jeff Spicolli, in 1982’s Fast Times at Ridgemont High).
Valley girls were never short of words. Even in the ‘80s, when cell phones were cassette-futurist bricks reserved for coke-fueled executives and elite businessmen, valley girls were often pictured tethered to a phone; their church and their prison in one. Reclined in satin-sheeted beds on party lines while Duran Duran smiled encouragingly from the wall or twisting metal coils around manicured fingers, preaching the glossiest of gospels over the din of the mall’s food court. And that accent was so distinct, you could hear it in a photograph.
The only truth we can really confirm is that the formation of a new speech pattern is difficult, sometimes even impossible, to track because of the wide variety of factors that can influence it. We know that the accent, referred to for lack of formality as the “valley girl” accent, is closely associated with Southern California, despite cropping up in communities across the country over the decades. It even employs a “vowel shift”, a slight skewing of vowel sounds in words, endemic to California. And while a trained linguist could point out subtle changes between a valley girl accent from say 1982 and what would be regarded as a valley girl accent in 2025, it’s generally accepted that the accent still exists in use today.
Beyond the Accent
Since accents often develop from the influence of other people in our surroundings conversing with us, the valley girl accent could be a blend of several influences, major and minor, in a sprawling city with as much diversity as Los Angeles. Yet, if we look back to the golden years of the valley girl accent, the 1980s, it’s not really framed as a way of speaking adopted by multiple cultures.
Rather, it’s a distinctly white phenomenon. No doubt, this is informed by the mostly caucasian demographic of the San Fernando Valley during the archetype’s height. But, considering the accent wasn’t exclusive to the San Fernando Valley, there may be more to this.
Ultimately, when it comes to the valley girl subculture, there’s a lot more going on than an accent. Just ask anyone to do their best valley girl impression. You’ll undoubtedly witness a blend of accent, physical mannerism, and even a distinct lexicon of colorfully outdated vocabulary liberally peppered with the word “like”. And perhaps that’s where the damage associated with the stereotyping of valley girls begins to really seep in.
The Zappas Explain Valley Girls to a Captivated World
Who knows how massive the valley girl pop cultural movement would have become had it not been for a fateful single in which psychedelic legend Frank Zappa dueted with his teenage daughter, Moon Unit. “Valley Girl” may not have been Zappa’s crowning achievement as an artist, but it was the most popular single of his career and even snagged a Grammy nomination. It’s a five-minute, mostly spoken word satire that more or less served as the world’s Duolingo for valley speak. And Moon Unit gleaned inspiration from malls and gallerias around the San Fernando Valley.
Those five minutes encapsulated the definition of the valley girl in a way that the world could understand (or possibly misunderstand). Frank had never been a stranger to criticizing misguided youth movements (with a particular vitriol for hippy culture). It was no mystery that the hyperconsumerism of the valley girl phenomenon was repugnant to him. But that was the general flavor of America in the 1980s; not just a deficiency relegated to an intensely specific faction of teenage girls. And when the world collectively laid into valley girls, a penchant for shopping was very rarely the focus of the attacks.
The Toxic Media Representation of Valley Girls
The idea of valley girls as inherently unintelligent seems as intrinsic to the archetype as the accent, fashion, mannerisms, and vocabulary. A lot of this can be boiled down to the portrayal of valley girls in popular media throughout the 1980s and into the ‘90s. Some of these were more nuanced, like Fast Times at Ridgemont High or Valley Girl, which brought a certain depth, at least in the context of the times, through an exploration of the archetype that considered more than the surface.
There were also a few moments in which the media treatment of the valley girl veered into feminism. Take, for example, the campy sci-fi horror of 1984’s underrated Night of the Comet in which a permed cheerleader refuses to play the damsel in distress, arming herself with a machine gun to take on post-apocalyptic mutant zombies. Or the cult classic TV show Buffy the Vampire Slayer, although, to be fair, Buffy’s evolution into a one-woman vampire wrecking crew involved her largely casting off her privileged valley girl history.
But for every nuanced take on the valley girl, there seemed to be three takes perpetuating the airheaded bimbo stereotype, providing a petri dish for vile misogyny to thrive. Perhaps the worst offender was the ‘90s teenage-focused sitcom Saved By the Bell, which seemed to misunderstand teenagers at best and abhor them at worst. Though continuity wasn’t Saved By the Bell’s strong suit, it’s believed that the well-to-do protagonists of the series lived somewhere in the Pacific Palisades area. And their recurring villains? Valley High School; an unseen nest of vapid, shallow, spiteful, classless morons. And considering how contemptible the heroes of Saved By the Bell could be, this was saying something.
Distorted on a Global Screen
Over the course of a decade or two, Hollywood was beaming this wildly distorted caricature into homes across the world, spreading a facsimile of the valley girl archetype into communities that had no other interaction with the subculture. Some saw something worth emulating in these upper-middle-class daughters of suburbia, and the trends (including the accent) caught on in some of the most unlikely corners of the country.
But still others found a focus for mockery; an easy target with an amplified sense of materialism that rid its persecutors of any pesky feelings of guilt. Valley girls were presented as hot, easy idiots for the country’s young men to at once lust over and degrade. But here, in California’s San Fernando Valley, valley girls were just kids, excited by new vistas in music, fashion, and social connection. Not too different from other kids. And, whether they were privileged or not, the stereotype was no doubt a lot to endure.
Ultimately, is it better to just let this aging idea of the valley girl archetype fade away with a time when you could make a movie like Revenge of the Nerds or Sixteen Candles? If we stacked up the joy that the valley girl persona brought people with the potential pain it caused, which would be greater? Is it irresponsible to pine for the bubble gum popping, Hi-NRG dropping, Hypercolor top cropping, mega mall shopping ladies of the 1980s? Probably.
The Valley Girl Amidst Us
So, where have all the valley girls gone? If we’re following the accent, it seems like they really haven’t gone anywhere. You’ll still meet valley girls across Southern California. But they’re not giggling around mall food courts. They’re in a Starbucks drive-thru or working late into the night as executives for tech companies or trying to be influencers on TikTok or maybe even selling homes as real estate agents. They’re everywhere. But with the way the world painted them, could we really blame them if they’d just disappeared?
With a brand that says as much as JohnHart’s, Senior Copywriter Seth Styles never finds himself at a loss for words. Responsible for maintaining the voice of the company, he spends each day drafting marketing materials, blogs, bios, and agent resources that speak from the company’s collective mind and Hart… errr, heart.
Having spent over a decade in creative roles across a variety of industries, Seth brings with him vast experience in SEO practices, digital marketing, and all manner of professional writing with particular strength in blogging, content creation, and brand building. Gratitude, passion, and sincerity remain core tenets of his unwavering work ethic. The landscape of the industry changes daily, paralleling JohnHart’s efforts to {re}define real estate, but Seth works to maintain the company’s consistent message while offering both agents and clients a new echelon of service.
When not preserving the JohnHart essence in stirring copy, Seth puts his efforts into writing and illustrating an ongoing series entitled The Death of Romance. In addition, he adores spending quality time with his girlfriend and Romeo (his long-haired chihuahua mix), watching ‘70s and ‘80s horror movies, and reading (with a particular penchant for Victorian horror novels and authors Yukio Mishima and Bret Easton Ellis). He also occasionally records music as the vocalist and songwriter for his glam rock band, Peppermint Pumpkin.
