Is The Hot Girl Movement Teaching Us To Be Better Human Beings?
Being a good person is sexy
In the Summer of 2019 (AKA Winter in Australia) rapper Megan the Stallion shared the cover of her album Fever on Twitter. With the line ‘She’s thee Hot Girl And she’s bringing thee Heat’ a new movement emerged. Celebrities and brands endorsed and flooded our socials with “Hot Girl Summer” in the best kind of way.
As explained by Megan The Stallion, ‘Hot Girl Summer’ is all about being ‘unapologetically YOU’ by being confident and having fun.
In Girls in the Hood, Megan The Stallion introduced us to the idea of “doing hot girl shit.” Extending upon “Hot Girl Summer,” this movement, developing largely on Tik Tok, has provided an opportunity for those who identify as women to embrace the everyday things they do under the guise of “hot girl shit,” often while Girls in the Hood plays in the background. The “Hot Girl” is no longer purely a physical or sexual concept belonging to the male gaze, but rather a mentality and state of mind driven by self-assurance and confidence.
Let’s not forget the cultural phenomenon that Cardi B (and Megan the Stallion’s) WAP became for female empowerment - embracing female sexuality, pleasure and dominance. This anthem was significant in so many ways, including by making a mark in an otherwise male dominated genre that has historically thrived on lyrics which hypersexualised and were often misogynistic towards women.
Even when Summer was over, the “Hot Girl Scholar” movement followed - which encouraged women to continue to focus on themselves by putting their education first. Last year, Megan The Stallion graduated college with a degree in health administration, donning a bejeweled graduation cap which said “Real Hot Girl Shit.” In October 2020 Megan the Stallion also started a global scholarship, the Don’t Stop Scholarship Fund, which offered two $10,000 scholarships available to women of colour in bachelors and post-graduate degrees.
The “Hot Girl Movement” has continued to shape and encourage people identifying as women to embrace themselves, and doing good - whether it be for themselves or others. For example, “Hot Vaxxed Summer” emerged on social media in the midst of the pandemic with the messaging that getting vaccinated was the key to returning to some normalcy (and fun!!). The messaging is simple but effective - getting vaccinated is sexy.
The instagram page @hotskinnyrich regularly posts relatable but satirical attributes of the “hot girl”, like sucking at parking. Brilliantly however, the page also uses its platform to get behind important causes and messaging, including toxic diet culture, racism and internalized misogyny.
Hot girls support hot girls - especially the women of colour who have been at the forefront of this empowering movement!
Image created with Canva