Are You Ready For A Hot Girl Summer?

There’s something in the air. No, not the thing that has ruined our lives for the past year, something better: sex. Or at least the possibility of it. This summer we’re being promised horny, ravishing revenge for all that isolation. Charged casual interactions, serial dating, whirlwind romances, hand-holding, spontaneous snogs, disturb-the-neighbours sleepovers: they’re all yours for the taking.

It’s being dubbed a Hot Girl Summer. The phrase, coined by Megan Thee Stallion in 2019, is, she has explained, ‘about women and men being unapologetically them, just having a good-ass time, hyping up their friends, doing you’. And for summer 2021, it’s become something of a rallying cry for intimacy and sex-starved singletons, whether you’re looking for The One or a For One Night Only.

Although the HGS is not exclusively the realm of the single person, for anyone who has gone through the past year-and-counting solo, it has particular significance. Nobody has had a free pass during the pandemic but getting through it alone has been a particular type of testing. And yet the single’s struggle has often felt minimised or ignored. Remember when Matt Hancock banned hugging? That was just a euphemistic way of saying, if you’re not co-habiting with a partner, sex is cancelled. Thanks for that.

Of course, it’s not been impossible to date this year – or ‘hug’, cough, cough – but it has been stymied by social distancing and the rigidity of the ensuing choreography. Spontaneity and possibility – two things that the single person can normally claim, weighed against security and Sunday nights on the sofa with someone – have been MIA. Sure, there have been ‘lockdown love stories’ (I know! I had one!) but the lesser discussed, rubbish sequel to many of these was the ‘lockdown heartbreak’ (I know! I had one!), which is excruciatingly difficult to get over without so much as the prospect of getting under somebody else.

For all the jubilation and anticipation about the bonking bacchanal that is summer ’21, it’s natural that there is also a degree of trepidation about it (for starters, all that erotic reverie sounds exhausting; I’ve been in bed by 9pm for the past year). Re-entry anxiety is understandable and normal. We’re out of practice when it comes to small talk (which is basically what flirting is, just with added eye contact and innuendo) and most of us are feeling the opposite of ‘Hot’ (or ‘Girls’ for that matter, the glut of pandemic-induced anxiety has aged us all a decade).

But the ‘Hot’ of ‘Hot Girl Summer’ is not about how you look. Rather, as its author has made clear, it’s to do with feeling hot – it can be what you want it to be. It’s about confidence, which is the headiest aphrodisiac of all. Being and feeling desirable doesn’t necessarily require a Love Island body, Bletchley Park brain and Silicon Valley bank account – but charisma and self-assurance are non-negotiables. They’re how you sparkle.

For me, HGS prep does mean I’m ‘waxed and vaxed’ with an arsenal of risqué dresses and expensive lingerie raring to be put to work. But it also means I am reclaiming my multifaceted, pre-pandemic life – reading more, heading to galleries. That’s not an intellectual flex or an admission I’ve run out of things to watch (I have) but it does mean I won’t rely on how my lockdown has been (spoiler: crap!) for flirty chat.

Furthermore, anyone familiar with the exhausting, underwhelming slog of modern dating will already be on familiar terms with disappointment. Can HGS live up to the hype? Probably not. Wetherspoons will not magically be transformed into Xanadu when social distancing ends. But it’s important to have hope. And, despite the dearth of options in the past few months, I don’t think now is the time to lower your standards – it’s time to raise them. Because if you have been alone during the past year, and have stared loneliness, fear, sadness and hourly existential crises square on but are still ready to get back out there, I’d say you’re not just tough – you’re somebody worth getting to know. You’ve shown how independent and self-sufficient you are, and what could be hotter than that?