Hot Feminists Summer, Period

    I recently read “We Should All Be Feminist” by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Most of us know her work thanks to some powerful excerpts used on Beyoncé’s self -titled album. A little less than halfway into the fan favorite “Flawless” you can hear Chimamanda’s voice recite "We teach girls to shrink themselves". To make themselves smaller. We say to girls ‘You can have ambition but not too much. You should aim to be successful, but not too successful. Otherwise you will threaten the man..”

    Every word of Chimamanda’s books felt so intentional and genuine. She speaks of being called a feminist as a young teen by a male friend. He said it with the intent of insulting her. Reading about her struggle with feminism felt familiar. I had not had the exact experiences or encounters as she did, yet I understood them so well. She speaks of not wanting to wear certain clothing because she wanted to be taken seriously. When talking about her early days as a feminist she explains that she had to be very specific in defining her type of feminism. She had to make it clear that she was not a man-hater and she likes wearing lipstick. People felt that her being a feminist meant she bashed males and hated femininity. After every passage I asked myself “Where have I heard this before? I then realized “Oh she is talking about literally every girl having a Hot Girl Summer!”

A Hot Girl Summer is feminism! Women being their most confident self, supporting one another and using equal opportunity to talk about the same topics males have been discussing for decades. Chimamanda discussed in her book that when a woman processes self-empowerment it comes with the burden of explaining that this empowerment does not mean the disempowerment of another party. Hot Girl Summer president Megan Thee Stallion has been accused of hating males because of the way she speaks about them in her music, why? Nothing about her lyrics suggest that she hates males only that she is self-assured in what they can do for her and what she can do for them. In a recent interview a well-known producer stated he felt like the new wave of female rap was “Strippers rapping…” Lets ask ourselves why he felt the need to say this. Probably because he is too distracted by the way these women are dressed to listen to what they are saying.

The fire placed on Hot Girl Summer (pun intended) has caused a lot of females to bring their support and love of their fellow women to the forefront. Recently Cardi B listed some of her favorite female rap artist and encouraged her fans to give them a listen. Doja Cat did the same. Megan Thee Stallion has recently been on record saying to be a Hot Girl you have to be “kind and confident.”

I think people get so distracted by the package a message comes in we sometimes loose the message. Currently we have beautiful, young feminist telling the world “We love ourselves, we are smart, we are sexy, we are self-empowered!” We were just clever enough to slap the title Hot Girl on it!

Feminist: the person who believes in the social, Political, and economic equality of the sexes.

Xoxo,

Hot Girl Sigourneyb