Last year was all about “big dick energy,” but since July, rapper Megan Thee Stallion’s summer 2019 motto ‘hot girl summer’ is all everyone is talking about.
After the 24-year-old rising Houston rapper released her debut album, Fever, in May, which was jam-packed with sex-positivity and self-love songs, one of her fans, @sweetliketeaaa, took to Twitter with a post captioned, “I heard it’s a hot girl summer.” The users post referencing Megan’s opening track “Cash S**t,” where the rapper declared that the song is “real hot girl s**t,” immediately sparked thousands of memes and responses. Turning the artist inspired movement into a summer phenomenon.
It “littered social media,” Sanjay Murray, a teacher, motivational speaker, and entrepreneur said of the movement. “It was catchy — it had swag to it. Hot girl summer was all about having a confident attitude which was evident in the pictures and memes posted on different social media platforms.”
Between thousands of social media users and celebrity’s involvement from Jordyn Woods to twin singers Chloe x Halle, hot girl summer became more than just a cute caption for a photo, but a mindset that thousands of women would embrace.
Megan Thee Stallion, known as Meg to her fans, proclaimed in an interview with The Root, that hot girl summer was about “women and men being unapologetically them, just having a good-a** time, hyping up their friends, doing you.”
Hot girl summer was all about uplifting women and encouraging them to live their best life and to be the most confident woman that they could be. Vox writer, Rebecca Jennings, also noted that the movement was inclusive to all women, as “according to mainstream culture — as long as you [had] the attitude and confidence, that [allowed] you to use the phrase ‘hot girl’ to describe yourself in whatever way you mean it, [and] you too [could] have a hot girl summer.”
However, as summer came to an end, women wondered whether Megan’s self-confidence inspired movement would end with it. But, instead of letting the movement die, Megan declared that the next phase of hot girl summer would be ‘hot girl semester’. Said best by Kaima Bakar, a writer for Metro.co.uk, hot girl semester “is all about channeling the bad b*tch summer vibes as you go back to school/work/ordinary lives.”
In August, while taking over the @TwitterMusic account, Megan, who is a junior at Texas Southern University, encouraged women to “invest in a planner, sit in the front row of their classes, dress up a few times a week, do assignments before the deadline and ‘STOP PROCRASTINATING’.” Soon after, women yet again hopped onto the Megan approved movement and have incorporated it into their own lives. Including, Rebekah Love, a PhD student and professional organizer of Organize For Love.
“I think a lot of women are inspired by Megan Thee Stallion. Anything that she does a lot of women want to follow in her lead,” she said. “To be unapologetic, get focused and make sacrifices.”
“It’s a declaration to the world that I’m getting serious, I’m getting focused, I’m getting clear about what I’m doing and how serious I am about it,” she added.
Since the beginning of hot girl semester, many women’s lives have transformed as they’ve changed their mindset’s and approach to their everyday life. Whether it’s making a commitment to themselves to have better time-management or to speaking up in the classroom when they have something to say, hot girl semester has inspired women to live out loud and become the best version of themselves.
20-year-old Raven Gillus, a college student and contributing writer for Women of Lyn, is one of many women whose lives has been transformed by the movement. “Overall, the movement has helped me to feel more confident in myself. It has helped me to push myself, being a full-time student who works part-time and is involved in extra-curricular activities on campus,” she explained. “It’s made me feel good about going to school. I enjoy being a nerd.”
Gillus believes that women should take away the hot girl semester aspect of working hard in everything that they do and always being authentically themselves. “I believe that all women should visualize who they want to be and try to show up as her every day,” she said. “Being a ‘hot girl’ is about being your best self, whether it’s during the summer or the semester. All women deserve to do that for themselves.”
Megan’s hot girl semester movement has also changed women’s lives by inspiring them to share their ‘hot girl’ journey with other women, including 20-year-old Kristen Ayanah, a Drew University student and YouTube vlogger.
At the beginning of the fall semester, Ayanah took her own spin on the movement and began a hot girl semester vlog series in which she vlogs her college life. “I’ve been a YouTuber for a couple of years,” she said. “Last year, I noticed that I did a lot of college vlogs but didn’t put an official name with it. — Then I heard about hot girl semester.”
“For me, hot girl semester is buckling down, working hard and staying focused. College is a challenge and being a hot girl is about focusing and maintaining the balance of a social and productive life,” she continued.
But due to the movement’s popularity, some brands and companies have tried to profit off the name by disregarding Megan’s encouraged movement tips and making it fit their agenda. Including Wendy’s, who advertised their lemonade as the “official drink of hot girl summer” in July. Forever 21 also sent out an email blast with the subject heading, “hot girl summah,” completely ignoring the official movement name.
After the rapper noticed that corporations were using her movement name in their marketing, she decided that it was necessary to get the names trademarked. Days after discussing her reasoning for moving forward with the trademark process with Allure, Megan announced over Virginia’s 103 Jamz that she had officially secured the trademark to hot girl summer, hot nerd s*** and hot girl semester.
“I’m excited to see what comes next,” Love spoke of the future of the movement. “A lot of people were concerned about other people benefiting from her idea. I’m happy that she’s been approved.”
Women don’t know what Megan has in store for the future of the ‘hot girl’ movement, but many want to continue to see it grow and transform women’s lives in bigger ways.
“I really do see this continuing on to more than just a movement, but a lifestyle,” Murray said.
