Summer can seem so transient. Whether in the form of pleasant weather and clear skies, or the distinct flavor that each passing summer occupies in our collective consciousness.
The latter has become especially apparent lately. Perhaps it’s a post-COVID-19 fear of missing out that makes us so intent on maximizing each summer’s potential according to seemingly random aesthetic and cultural criteria.
Each summer has its distinct category now, immortalized in our collective memory by its pop culture backdrop.
As evidenced by Eurosummer, Barbie summer, Hot Girl summer and the most recent Brat summer, large sectors of popular culture tend to push the agenda that we should all aspire to some ultimate summer vision dictated by niche internet hyperfixations or funnelled into our feeds by guerrilla marketing campaigns.
Now that last year’s Brat summer has been officially and rightfully put to rest, where do we go from here? What kind of summer can we anticipate and prepare for? What kind of summer can we engineer, create or manifest? After all, the sky’s the limit, at least until the sun sets on Sept. 22.
The summer bucket lists that we grew up aspiring to, making and fulfilling are no longer birthed out of pure childhood or young-adult whimsy, cobbled together using crayons and craft glitter. Instead, we’re cross-coordinating spreadsheets, Canva presentations and Pinterest boards dictated not by our pie-in-the-sky sensibilities, but by dry, detached digital valuations of what’s worth our fleeting time in the sun.
If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?
This isn’t to say that aesthetically pleasing hobbies and experiences aren’t worth exploring or chasing. It just takes more effort to escape the increasingly convoluted impulse to perform a good summer rather than truly experience one. The two can, and often do, bleed into each other, but there’s more to a good summer than an Aperol spritz or a good sunset picture.
Cole Blackett, a copywriter at Backpack Communications, said we need to engage with these trends on our terms so as not to get swept up by them, in that their intended purpose is to enrich and not subsume our memories.
“We live so much of our lives online that if you’re not intentionally trying to go out and make summer memories, then yeah, what you’re going to remember from the summer, whatever you were seeing on the internet,” Blackett said.
We use summer to gauge time. Unlike the other seasons that slog on for at least one point or another, it’s summer that we anticipate and revel in the most. We eagerly await the lengthening days, watch the trees return to their green and shed our layers accordingly.
From the get-go, at least in the U.S., we tend to see summer as analogous to youth. It represents the freedom of having no school and no responsibilities, the limited time we have to truly enjoy what life has to offer before we’re bogged down with responsibilities.
Nature is in its prime at the same time we are, full of life and light. We can only follow the breeze where it carries us for so long before it turns into a whipping wind, and we’re forced to reorient so as not to freeze or get truly carried away.
Summer is almost utopian, occupying the space between our expectations and reality. It exists in a limbo state somewhere between the memories of summers past, the fervent excitement for the summers to come and the seemingly dwindling returns each coming year brings.
We don’t remember the mosquitoes as well as the sunsets, the sticky heat doesn’t leave as lasting an impression as the cool lakeside breezes, and we don’t recall the sunburns as well as the tans they leave behind.
When we’re in it, though, we take in and experience all of this. We bask in the heat on a high UV day as much as we despise the way our thighs stick to park benches or how often we reapply sunscreen.
We want to make our limited number of summers count, though. It’s easier to remember and reorder them according to the sum of their parts, which is where the nostalgia comes from.
So we quantify and differentiate them, categorizing them for our sake, because they’re limited. We want to have a summer to travel the world, a summer to party, a summer to get our life together, a summer to turn pretty.
Marketing takes advantage of this. It’s preemptive and anticipatory. We romanticize in retrospect. The composite image that this process leaves us is hazy and light-leaked, leaving room for preconceived notions and extrapolated nostalgia.
Jaelynn Jackson, general manager of Backpack Communications, said summer presents unique challenges to ad agencies, especially given the pace of trend forecasting on social media.
“When you think of social media and that kind of marketing and advertising tactics, you kind of have to be quick on your feet,” Jackson said.
This is likely what contributes most strongly to the overly curated, contrived and hyper-specific feel behind some of these trends, like the tomato girl, coconut girl or any of the various coastal aesthetics, from cowgirls to grandmothers.
This gives brands an in. Not only are we now provided with how-to guides, mapping out itineraries for the best years and seasons of our lives, but we’re also equipped with starter packs and accessories.
It can all go according to plan, which is incredibly comforting. Who doesn’t want to assuage their existential dread and fear of missing out, while living their best, most aspirational life?
At the end of the day, we need to contend with what we want to show for our lives. A few mementos bought from TikTok shop?
We may only hope to begin our summers with a bucket list and end with a highlight reel. Throw in a couple of good Instagram posts, and you’re living the dream in the season that “cannot be.”
We don’t need to tailor our lives to narrative, because it nearly never quite fits in the parameters or checks the boxes we need it to. A framework, goals and a vision board are good.
I implore us to look beyond what’s readily available and walk the extra mile home in the 80-degree heat.
Break out the crayons, close out your tabs and start anew.
H.A.G.S.