Hot Girl Summer

the intricacies of a media ruled trend

Iwas having coffee with a friend one day - we’ll call her Alice. Alice declared that she was going to have a hot girl summer Being relatively out of the loop on most events in life, I asked her what a hot girl summer was. Alice had decided that a hot girl summer was a summer of effectively old school debauchery: going out, partying, getting with lots of people, maybe even having a traditional summer fling. The only rule? Absolutely nothing serious.

Apparently, the hot girl summer is what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas but for a whole season and also specifically for women. As Alice had been recently dumped, I inquired about whether this was the best project when taking into consideration her overall mental health. Alice lit a cigarette and declined to answer.

My conversation with Alice left me feeling confused. Was hers the accurate definition of a hot girl summer? Should I have a hot girl summer? Is it dangerous? Generally, any type of aesthetic that involves groups of women and analyses their lives makes me instantly suspicious. Still, I was intrigued, so I did my research and found out that the idea of a hot girl summer rose to popularity with the homonymous Megan The Stallion song from 2019. On a base level, the hot girl summer relates to being a girl, being hot and the time of year being - guess what - summer. Seems simple, right? Well, it doesn’t just stop there. It didn’t take long for this trivial concept to develop the type of mystical social subtext only the Internet can manufacture. Not for nothing, when you google ‘hot girl summer’ and scroll through various definitions - mainly provided by the one and only Urban Dictionary - the word “hoe” frequently appears. A conservative definition then would conclude that the hot girl summer is also characterised by both not being tied down to any specific person and the tendency to ignore or spontaneously drop potential partners.

In other words, the hot girl summer exudes the aura of Carrie Bradshaw in Sex and The City - it is the epitomic allure of potential and possibility. As soon as May hits, you are expected to run around the city, buy extremely expensive shoes and finally transform into an irresistibly sexy entity that men are irrevocably drawn to. Then you will take after Meryl Streep in Mamma Mia and embark on a musical journey to have casual sex in your twenties. Surprise surprise, romance has departed our world in favour of a weirdly scrutinising set of rules for women to learn and follow. How original and fun!

However, precisely because of how stereotypical this whole situation sounds, it exposes the problem with hot girl summer: it doesn’t exist.

Anyone who has spent an entire two or three months partying, drinking and shagging their way around knows the last thing on your mind is upkeeping your physical appearance. Your main thoughts tend to be where the next pharmacy is so you can obtain ibuprofen, condoms, and a pregnancy test. Hot girl summer then appears to be yet another barometer we’ve created for women to judge themselves and each other; you can’t just have a normal summer, or a relaxing summer, or even just a boring summer. You have to have a ‘hot girl summer’ or else you’re doing something wrong. It all seems like a lot of effort for something that is supposed to be simple.

Is that all there is to it then? Are we doomed to this cycle?

When discussing it further with another friend - let’s call this one Emily - she described a completely different experience. While her hot girl summer did include partying and messing around, it primarily focused on having a great time with all the friends she was unable to see during college, getting to travel, and, finally, relaxing. Yes, of course relationships appeared within that, but it was not the main theme of the exercise.

Emily opened up a whole other element to the concept of hot girl summer: that it was possible to have one without the express purpose of getting laid. Sure, if it happened, it happened - she wouldn’t say no, but ultimately she just wanted to spend a good summer with her friends and have some funny stories to share at the end of it. In this way, the idea of the hot girl summer might even come to reject the notion of perfection. It convinces you that stumbling out of the nightclub on MDMA at 7am in the morning is not ‘messy’ , it’s ‘exploring Europe’.

It then turns out that maybe the real idea of hot girl summer was never about being a hot girl during summer; maybe it just relies on the friends you made along the way and the great experiences that you shared together. Yet, not to worry if that is still not your scene. Everybody knows that after hot girl summer follows sad girl autumn: sitting at home, drinking tea, listening to depressing tunes, and ruminating. This definitely seems much more accessible; every girl can, in fact, do that, and you don’t even have to leave your bed.

In conclusion, the media will always try to shove something down your throat about what you ‘should’ be doing and what is ‘fun’; however, this does not make any of these expectations true. On the contrary, they are generally not fun and overwhelmingly unachievable. So, my personal advice to you all is to follow your own gut and find out what fun and happiness consist of for you. Next year, aim at having a summer of joy, no matter if it is hot or not.

WORDS by Sarah Murnane