I’ve always had a number of friends who live in the Valley, and I swore up and down I’d never live there (hot, dirty, etc.). But fate having a wicked sense of humor and all, I eventually wound up in Van Nuys.
And this is precisely why I’m [del]moving[/del] [del]escaping[/del] running for my life. I keep having Lethal Weapon flashbacks. Please, Lord, don’t take me before I can get out!
Well, a certain segment of “mall rats” were wannabe Valley Girls, or adopted the style and idiom just as a form of tribal ID. They would be the closest to followers of the Valley gospel.
Britney and Miley are often maligned as “white trash with money” (which Roseanne Barr once said about herself, was “America’s worst nightmare”), which I tend to think is a classist attitude to take, but they are not Vals that I can think of
Yeah, I would have expected that. For all their visibility, they were a limited segment of the teen girl cohort and there was a certain time-window when the archetypal type would have been in full bloom. Then they’d move on and get a life. I would imagine that by the time the idiom was all over the mass media, there were already far more poseurs affecting the stylings than actual Vals around.
Y’know, a girl who was 15 in 1982 (when the Zappa record came out) would now be 47. So the original “Valley Girls” may now be the older “Real Housewives” type. Except for the many ones who went on to get a life and have a happy family, decent careers, etc.
As it happens, my wife is a former Valley Girl–grew up in Studio City, frequented the Galleria. There is/was nothing especially good or awful about them as a slice of teeniana, but they were memorably captured in song and story because they happened to live in the entertainment media capital of the world.
My wife and her friends mostly grew up into regular folks, but one or two do live “Real Housewives” kind of lives–not my wife of course 
I can certainly confirm that they were all middle and upper class, though.
The Valley Girls grew up to become The Californians.
The confusion might also be Silicon Valley, the area from Palo Alto to South San Jose, or The Silicone Valley, which is, once again, The San Fernando Valley.
Trust me, wherever you go, you’re gonna miss the circling helicopters at three a.m. 
I grew up in South Central. At least in Van Nuys, the helicopters aren’t actually shining a midnight sun through my window. The sound of the ghetto bird is almost like white noise - helps me sleep. 
Inspired by this thread I did some random searching on Valley Girl topics and I came across this interesting article: Fast Times with Valley Girls: 30 Years Later, What Do Two SoCal Classics Tell Us About America?
I live in the central valley (Visalia). It’s hot, dusty and hot. Any other questions?
A Valley Girl circa 1980 would have been an upper-middle class to affluent white girl, possibly Jewish, and most likely from Encino or Sherman Oaks. And yes—they were very real, and they really did say “gag me with a spoon.” Fast Times at Ridgemont High, despite appearing to be a parody, is actually a very accurate portrayal of Valley life in the late seventies and early eighties. The central portion is now entirely owned by Latinos, Indians, and Middle Easterners. The white folks are still clinging to the border areas such as Chatsworth, Porter Ranch, anything south of Ventura Blvd. The Armenians have thrown up a barricade around Glendale to protect their sheep, and are keeping everybody else out. The rest of the crackers fled to Simi Valley and have armed and barricaded themselves.
ETA: I feel constrained to point out though, that there were no All American Burgers anywhere in the SFV. In fact, I think there were only four ever in existence, and the store in Westwood was the only successful one.
That video could have easily been made in Hollywood. Contrary to what movies tell you and popular belief, the place is mostly a shit hole.
Ah, I meant to reply to the post that linked to the video…I know that you know what I mean.
I wasn’t asking any questions in the first place, and what you say is entirely consistent with what I said. What is your point? (I spent about a year living in the central valley too. Yes, it tends to be unpleasantly hot.)
Once again the SDMB educates across the digital divide. 
So now it seems the Valley Girl is a 1980s icon and doesn’t really exist today. Is that correct?
Did “uptalk” originate with the VG?
The other question which confuses me is references upthread to Essex Girls and Jersey Shore. From glimpses of those programs (I have teenagers) the girls appear to be considerably downmarket from the image of a Valley Girl. Not the same type at all. More working class and uneducated if that isn’t too broad a brush. Crass.
A valley girl is a shopping, shallow girl who comes from some money. (To be honest, the girls in Clueless are valley girl-ish, they just live in Beverly Hills and have a ton of money)
The Jersey Shore type girl is working class, foul mouthed, hard drinking and gets in (or starts) fights.
Australians were certainly doing it before valley girls were.
My partner is an original Valley Girl. Born and raised in Tarzana in the 1970s and 1980s. She’s pretty normal, but also proud of her Valley roots.
The way she explained it, Valley Girl culture was mainly limited to the middle- and upper-middle class neighborhoods at the south end of the Valley; Woodland Hills, Tarzana, Encino, Sherman Oaks, and Studio City. Living south of Ventura Boulevard is something of a status symbol. The Valley is a short-ish drive from the beaches of Malibu, so there was a lot of influence from surfer culture; Valspeak is essentially surfer talk absorbed by teenage girls.
We just returned from a 10 day trip to the LA area; seven in the Valley (Warner Center). It wasn’t that bad; I kinda’ liked it. Well, except for Van Nuys, but Norm’s at 1:00 AM was pretty cool. I got the impression that the Valley is to Westside Los Angelenos what New Jersey is to those from New York City.
I got the impression that many Westside LA residents see the Valley in a similar way that those from NYC see New Jersey, in a way. However, (southern) Valley residents aren’t seen as crass; more like less worldly, more family-oriented, and more suburban.
Keep in mind this is coming from someone who’s not an LA resident/native.
The Valley is whatever significant Californian valley you live near, is what I have determined. Each has its own character. One of the qualities of the topography out here is its distinctness. There are ranges of hills and mountains, separated by very flat alluvial valleys, some of exceptional size (if you measure the Central Valley including both watersheds, it’s about 500 miles long). It’s not randomly bumpy or gently rolling hardly anywhere. Hence the ability to call your nearby valley The Valley and everybody around you knows what you mean.
As a Westside Angeleno, I feel qualified to comment. It’s more akin to how people who live in Manhattan think about Queens. The Valley isn’t trashy, just dull.
And hot. There’s a significant temperature difference when you cross the mountains.
I’m sure there’s SOME interesting stuff in The Valley, but there’s not a lot of reason to go there if you don’t already live there. I’m more likely to drive to Pasadena for fun than Van Nuys, even though Pasadena is like three times farther away.
As a born/raised New Yorker, I can say that much of northeastern New Jersey does parallel the San Fernando Valley of the 1980s. Most of Bergen County is suburban, leafy, middle to upper middle class, not particularly diverse (though I suspect there are quite a few East Asians sprinkled about, and of course Jewish folks), and quite dull. The more downscale, tough-chick stuff is, I think, mainly in cities and counties a bit further south from Bergen, up to and including the north end of the Jersey Shore.