A Hot Girl vs. Healing Girl Summer
On hedonism, wholesomeness, and Megan Thee Stallion.
In the summer of 2020, on assignment for a story and in search of post-pandemic predictions, I spoke to a trend forecaster in London. She had co-authored a macro-trend titled, ‘The Pleasure Revolution’, which predicted a shift away from relentless productivity and toward a lifestyle that prioritised pleasure. Inactivity and rest would become the new status symbols, she said, and there were already signs of this shift appearing in our culture. The ‘It girl’ on Instagram was no longer documenting her time at parties, but her quiet nights in with a natural wine. We were buying loungewear to signal our homebody status instead of activewear to prove our attendance at 6am gym classes. I thought my desire to slow down was directly correlated to growing up or burning out, but it appeared to be part of something much bigger.
Since that phone call, The Pleasure Revolution has continued to take hold. People have been moving out of big cities in search of space and nature. Overseas they have been resigning from jobs, with The Great Resignation expected to arrive in Australia next year. Personally, I have spent the past ten months in a sleepy coastal town enjoying hikes by the ocean and minimal alcohol. Yet, over the past two months, I have noticed a shift in my own impulses and the people around me. As Jia Tolentino once wrote, “the heart only has room for so much steadfastness”. Friends who weren’t drinking are now attending clubs every weekend. My perpetual nights in have been replaced with a desire to constantly be out. I feel a little like that kid who was never allowed to attend high-school parties now finding themselves at O-Week, making up for lost time. Only this time, I am both the parent and the child. Collectively, our cravings for wholesomeness have been replaced with a desire for hedonism and it seems our hot girl summer is here.
The origins of ‘hot girl summer’ stem back to Houston rapper Megan Thee Stallion and the year of 2019. For years, Stallion had called her fans ‘hotties’ and herself ‘Hot Girl Meg’ but in May of that year, when she released her first full-length album, Fever, lines such as ‘real hot girl shit’ continued to build her association with the hot girl sentiment. Soon, her fans started posting about ‘hot girl summer’ and by August of that year Stallion released a track of the same name, officially claiming hot girl summer as hers. In an interview with The Root, Stallion defined ‘hot girl summer’ as “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.” It reminds me a little of Big Dick Energy, which the writer Allison P. Davis once defined as, “a healthy, satisfied, low-key way you feel yourself.”
As hot girl summer has continued to proliferate through our culture, anti-hot girl sentiments have also arisen. In July, as the U.S. briefly emerged from the pandemic to catch some sun, an LA-based content creator, Helena Honey Selassie, coined the term ‘healing girl summer’. Over the past' 18 months, Selassie had recovered from a binge eating disorder and prioritised her health. She was unlearning certain behaviours she had picked up in a toxic relationship. So when she posted a video of herself running on TikTok and someone commented ‘OK hot girl summer’, she replied, ‘No, it’s a healing girl summer’. The 30-year-old then created a ‘healing girl summer’ series that went viral and the phrase stuck. By August, The New York Times published a piece, titled ‘Welcome to ‘Healing Girl Summer’, featuring Selassie and a bunch of other women who had left relationships and were choosing the path of healing over hedonism. “‘Hot girl summer’ is about feeling confident in who you are and looking good while doing it,” Selassie told The New York Times. “‘Healing girl summer’ is all about learning to love yourself and eventually love someone else even after you’ve been hurt.”
A couple of weeks ago, I informed two friends that I was writing about the hot girl vs. healing girl summer predicament and I couldn’t stop thinking about them attending a Studio 54-themed party which they later discovered featured Paulini live in concert. “Hahaha,” one replied, “Hot and healing.” While my friend was kind of joking, she echoed the sentiments of the psychotherapist Rachel Wright who said, when it comes to choosing between a hot girl or healing girl summer, we don’t have to view it in such binary terms. “So often we create an ‘either-or' situation without realising it can be an ‘and’ situation,” she said. And after the last two years, that have been defined not by time, but rules, it feels fitting to blur the lines a little. However we choose to let go of the year that has been - be it by taking the path of hedonism or wholesomeness or both - it is entirely ours. This choice will depend on our nature, our pandemic experience, and what we currently define as pleasure. A definition that will, no doubt, continue to change as we do. If I’ve learned anything over the past year, it’s that humans are incredibly inconsistent beings with constantly changing desires. Having the freedom to give in to these impulses - however temporary they are - is something we are only just beginning to enjoy again. And it feels good to give in to them, if only for a while.
Related (and unrelated) recommendations:
I highly-recommend Kyle Chayka’s recent piece for The New Yorker where he breaks the year down into different vibes.
If you’re a Succession fan, don’t miss this profile on Jeremy Strong (also from The New Yorker) which has caused some controversy over the last two weeks.
In honour of summer and the possible paths one can take this season, I have made both a ‘healing girl summer’ playlist and ‘hot girl summer’ playlist. Choose your journey or, alternatively, the play the first at golden hour and the second as the evening escalates.
I recently saw ‘Don’t Look Up’ in theatres (highly recommend) and have fallen into an obsessive Jennifer Lawrence and Jonah Hill hole. If you missed the Vanity Fair profile of Lawrence last month, read it here. She discusses stepping away from fame and work and prioritising her life for a while.
And if you’re in need of a book over summer, here are a few recommendations. For those wanting an escape, read Sorrow and Bliss by Meg Mason which is easy, compelling fiction exploring a marriage breakdown and mental health. It will make you laugh and cry and you won’t be able to put it down. For those wanting to learn, read How To Do Nothing by Jenny Odell which essentially explores how we can get off of our devices more often and pay attention to the world around us. For those wanting a laugh, read I Feel Bad About My Neck: And Other Thoughts On Being A Woman by Nora Ephron. It’s a fun collection of essays that also makes a good gift for mum. For those feeling contemplative, read The Cost Of Living by Deborah Levy which is the second book in her trilogy of memoirs exploring writing and what it means to be a woman today.
Finally, this TikTok of Cardi B which could be considered aggressive healing girl summer vibes.
Stay safe, enjoy the sunshine, and I’ll see you back here on the first Friday of February. E.x
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