How TikTok redefined hot girl summer
Megan Thee Stallion’s signature lifestyle gets an unexpected post-pandemic makeover.
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It sounds like I made this up just to make myself feel better, but I promise it’s real. —Kate
In April 2020, a few weeks into the pandemic, I soothed myself by plotting my explosive return to normal life, when the time came. We’ll rent out an entire bar, my sister and I daydreamed from quarantine in our parents' house in Philadelphia. All the missed birthdays will get a redo. The drugs I previously said I’d never do again will be flowing.
Now, the return to normal we’ve been dreaming about for so long is here, poetically coinciding with warmer weather. It’s the perfect time to resurrect the 2019 “hot girl summer” lifestyle inspired by Megan Thee Stallion.
“It’s just basically about women—and men—just being unapologetically them, just having a good-ass time, hyping up your friends, doing you, not giving a damn about what nobody got to say about it,” she told The Root two years ago this month. “You definitely have to be a person that can be the life of the party, and, y’know, just a bad bitch.”
In its most common use, hot girl summer means being single and ready to party—which should be many people, coming out of a year of isolation. But all our back-to-normal daydreaming was a distraction from the fact that the pandemic had irreparably changed us. People coupled up. Got really into their skincare. Made sourdough. Suddenly, a room of packed sweaty strangers and unknown makeouts seems more conducive to a panic attack than catharsis.
A new narrative has taken shape on TikTok. Hot girl summer 2021 is about staying hydrated. Remembering to take off your makeup before bed. Being kind to yourself after a year spent learning that you are the most important thing you have. (It may not surprise you to learn most of the people making these Hot Girl Summer 2.0 videos are white ... after white women already adopted the term for themselves in 2019.)
This all started with a trend about how your hot girl summer has been “ruined” by the surprise arrival of a pandemic partner, or a full-time job that keeps you in your home office from 9 to 5 on summer days. But instead of stopping there, TikTok users broadened the definition to include finding power in your own circumstances—which, honestly, isn’t far from what Megan Thee Stallion was saying in the first place.
In one recent hot girl summer TikTok, user @kaylieestewart wakes up early, works out, answers emails, and does her laundry. @lexxhidalgo’s hot girl summer routine involves chugging water and writing out affirmations. For @girlwiththeprettytoes, hot girl summer is as simple as a friendly reminder to not get in bed while wearing “outside clothes.”
This isn’t to say hot girl summer has been totally reappropriated—I’ve seen enough Instagram Stories to know other people are more than ready to indulge in its traditional meaning. But for the people who can’t quite snap back, hot girl summer is in the eye of the beholder ... and this beholder, for one, goes to bed at 10pm.