This Substack’s soundtrack 🎶
Anyone who says they don’t crave a Hot Girl Summer isn’t being honest with themselves. I am not immune to daydreaming of languid hours so deconstructed from the norm that you don’t know the day of the week anymore. I want to be on a boat with a deep tan surrounded by my friends. I want to eat grilled meats and peaches and cream chased by glasses of crémant. I want to dive into turquoise water and loudly exclaim how all this saltwater is doing wonders for my hair.
Of course, real life is a far cry from this Tumblr fever dream, but summer and my body don’t seem to gel together and it makes me feel like an absolute freak. By the way, now and in the rest of this article, when I talk about my “body”, I mean my earthly form in the most literal sense. I’m not referring my body’s size, shape or ability (thankfully, most of us put that version of Hot Girl Summer in the bin years ago).
Waking up on a summer morning is usually perfect. There’s nothing like stepping outside, freshly showered and draped in light clothing, the gentle morning rays caressing your skin. If I could freeze time at that moment I would. Alas, before long I need to smear my entire body and face with factor 50 and jam a cap on my head to protect my scalp from getting scorched. Over the next several hours as the sun turns up the heat, I become a puddle of sweat. No deodorant is powerful enough. Around me, everything else is melting too: my bottle of water drips on my knees with every swig, the platter of cheese and cold cuts sweats profusely on the table, liquified chocolate bars swim in their wrappers. My phone goes on a freaker and sends me a temperature warning, and so I trudge inside to put it in the fridge. Respite comes as evening falls, but it is short lived. Oily sunscreen removed, I now have to douse myself in bug spray thanks to a convenient mosquito bite allergy I somehow developed in my early 20s (when I get bitten it looks like a big bruise and sometimes doesn’t fade for several months). Mix that with the constant blemishes I have on my legs and arms from a) CrossFit and b) general clumsiness, and you end up with quite a cursed aesthetic. Perhaps there is something Brat Girl Summer about this look, but I’m not feeling it.
I adore swimming in the ocean. Growing up on an island, the ocean features in many of my core memories. I always enjoyed swimming and floating in the sea, even in Ireland’s hardcore temperatures, and so swimming anywhere in southern Europe or further afield always seems to dreamy to me. It’s often the only relief from the intense heat of the day.
However, saltwater and my very long, very thick, very fine, very bleached hair are mortal enemies. No matter what I do (braiding, pre-wetting with fresh water, coating in coconut oil or natural conditioner) my hair turns into dreadlock-like clumps that take up to an hour to brush out post dip. In fact, everything about the average beach experience seems built to cause me strife: the soft ground burning my feet around the edges of my Birkenstocks, funky nautical smells, obnoxious people, random gusts of wind that pepper your eyes and sticky, sunscreened body with sand. Later, even after a shower, you still find sand in your ears, in the spine of your book and in the corners of your phone case. I’ve been to many beaches over the years, from tourist-filled hotspots in Ireland and Portugal to empty, postcard beaches in Nicaragua and the Philippines, and my ✨unpopular opinion✨ is that the beach is better in theory than it is in reality. This is why I’m a huge fan of Croatia and Greece because of their many rock beaches. Still, I wish the reality was different. When I was a kid, I was obsessed with surfer girls like Alana Blanchard who seemed so at ease on the beach, like real life mermaids.
So is it just me? All around me, people wait for summer with the giddy anticipation of a child waiting for Christmas morning. Of course I know that there are other things at play: weddings, summer holidays for children, festivals, finally absorbing some vitamin D, even showing off a physique you worked damn hard on over the winter months. All valid reasons to love the summer. Yet nobody ever seems to talk about all the things that make summer hard to get through. It’s like everyone else is immersed in an alternative kodachrome reality, their smiles simmering in the heat waves.
Talking about this makes me sound miserable. Admitting that you’re not fond of summer instantly brands you as a pariah. I’ve thought a lot about this and have a simple explanation that I hope expresses how I feel without sounding like I am trashing the good name of summer for no reason. As a highly sensitive person, summer brings together a constellation of sensory experiences that my body struggles with. It might sound silly, but all those grains of sand stuck to my skin really irritate me, as do my mosquito bites and the constant worrying about getting more mosquito bites. The heat fries my brain to the point where working my office job at high temperatures can feel like torture. Everything combines into a distracting physical and mental noise that I can’t escape. Summer inverts my thinking inward, bringing me back to my body again and again like a boomerang. I just don’t feel comfortable, and I have to constantly be reminded of this discomfort at every hour of the day until the summer is out.
In stark contrast, autumn and winter roll out the red carpet for my body. When I wash my hair in winter, it falls in buttery layers against my soft knit jumper which is touching my smooth, unlotioned, unsprayed skin. The only product I need is a little splodge of Aesop hand cream or tallow balm if my hands get dry as the seasons switch. If I like, I can use face oils which always feel unpleasantly heavy in summer months. I feel squeaky clean. I don’t sweat or itch. Nothing is biting me, not even the cold thanks to all the warm layers. In summer, eating sometimes feels like a chore. The intense heat evaporates hunger but you know you need to eat because you’ve been out and about all day. In winter, food is an extra level of inviting and celebratory, it brings people together around cramped dining tables no matter the weather outside. There’s something extra special about these hearty, warm and cinnamony foods prepared with love 🩷
One of my favourite winter rituals is purposely making myself cold and then making myself warm again. To me, there are few greater pleasures in life than sitting in a wood-fired sauna, followed by ice-water bathing and then sitting by the fire with a tea or hot chocolate in hand. I would choose this over a hot summer day anytime. This gives me an explosive, almost synesthetic feeling. It feels like the colour gold, the firm crispness of an apple and a warm hug all at once.
Best of all, at the end of the day you climb into bed and crush the thick, dry duvet into a makeshift cocoon. You sleep soundly knowing there are many months between you and those heady nights of thin bedsheets, a fan blasting lukewarm air onto your bed-beached body.
To any Hot Girls out there enjoying your summer, I salute you. Go for it. For any fellow Winter Girls, I hope that you can make it through the next few weeks by soaking up all the positives to be found in summer’s glittering duality. Saltwater may have no magic left for our hair and we may never make our peace with biting insects, but there is still plenty to love. Wear colourful linen clothing and gold jewellery, because if there ever was a time, that time is now. Walk barefoot on the grass, one of life’s most grounding experiences. Get completely twisted on frozen margaritas and chocolate 🍄. Play board games for hours with dear friends. Live cheaply, especially in places like Berlin where basically the entire city is a third space: a few bikes, späti beers and a park and you have yourself an evening! Frolic tipsy like Marie Antoinette in the breathtakingly blue-toned, perfumed hours of dusk and dawn. Finally, fall asleep to the sound of thunder as another summer storm strobes its way through the hot sky overhead.
I am neither a Summer girl, nor a Winter girl. I am an Autumn girl. September is perfect and October is my favourite month, because of Halloween and my birthday. I am a spooky girl. Give me yellow leaves and orange pumpkins and I am happy. BUT. I live in Australia and October is Spring. First world problems.
I share your unpopular opinion 🙋🏼♀️ no sandy beaches for me! (only for a quick paddle or to see my dogs pawprints imprinted in the sand 🐾)