Last week, I received an email about women’s sandals, aimed at anyone “planning a #barefootboysummer”. I have no such plans, but I was curious to see how shoes would help me achieve this, so I opened it.
The sandals had a thin corkbed and a thong and were pretty far from being barefoot but that didn’t seem to matter. #Barefootboysummer, the micro-trend for a few famous men to go barefoot, had established itself as yet another snappy phrase to add to the vast lexicon of ways in which each season is now being packaged up in the hope of conjuring promise – and ultimately, bringing in profit.
This fixation with coining pithy three-word expressions to define cultural moments began, in earnest, in 2019 with #hotgirlsummer. A US phrase borrowed from a lyric by Megan Thee Stallion, it didn’t so much infiltrate social media as overwhelm it. “Being a Hot Girl is about being unapologetically YOU, having fun, being confident, living YOUR truth, being the life of the party etc,” the rapper wrote on Twitter. Part ironic, part sincere, anyone could be a “hot girl”, and proclaim it with a sort of giddy and communal self-acceptance.
Its success was so huge that it quickly became a tool to hawk everything from cocktails and holidays to two-for-one pizzas – and even iron supplements. What had begun organically was soon pounced on by advertisers, who, as any Mad Man will know, have always sought to capture the zeitgeist and market it. Wendy’s, Forever 21 and Duolingo all adopted the phrase to sell their wares. Despite being four years old, #hotgirlsummer remains a popular hashtag on social media.
Seasons are obvious targets for branding. We know that much from Christmas. From a high street perspective, using a viral phrase seems to be the simplest way to push a new or existing trend. But today, seasons are being broken down into seasons within seasons, moments within moments, all catalogued through hashtags. I have yet to get through a week without being told it’s Friyay (Friday) by Uber Eats or hump day (Wednesday) by a pub.
During the pandemic #hotgirlsummer was replaced, briefly, by #Christiangirlautumn (white women enjoying Horlicks and wholesome activities), which felt more ironic than capitalist, only to return in early 2021 – gender-free, upbeat and political – as #hotvaxsummer, with its post-pandemic promise that if we all got vaccinated, natural order would return. Inevitably, that too became a springboard for selling shoes. #Shortkingspring had some success, too, beginning life as a body-positive movement in praise of small men such as Tom Holland and Volodymyr Zelenskiy – though even that ended up on a tank top.
But few took off in the same way as Stallion’s original (it was strangely hard to sell anything using 2022’s #belowaverageman and its celebration of normality as a jumping-off point).
Some argue this explosion in seasonal branding points to – very plausibly – the cruel hope of summer compounded by pandemic disappointment and childhood nostalgia. Summer, in particular, feels hotter and more unpredictable in the UK. Selling a pastoral fantasy that we’ll spend the season barefoot (or having sex, or once upon a time, getting vaccinated) is a nice idea when the world, and seasons, are in flux.
But it also points to something darker. That co-opting of the social realm is at the beating heart of capitalism. Anything that is spontaneous, organic and – crucially – free, can end up being sold back to you; even being barefoot. This process steals the life out of things, dilutes their meaning and renders them boring, absurd or even actively dangerous. Just look at the way oil companies have absorbed the language of sustainability and the environmental movement, or fast fashion’s “sponsorship” of Pride.
Perhaps that’s why these phrases are losing impact. The ones I like best now are laden with irony – see #fedgirlsummer, devised by a friend bikini shopping last weekend. Or my own aesthetic for 2023, #Which?girlsummer, because I’m doing up my kitchen.
Returning to the latest neologism, #barefootboysummer has yet to take off; all around me, men are shoed. It has stiff competition in #Europecore (wearing linen, reading Deborah Levy), #Italiancore (wearing linen, reading Natalia Ginzburg) and #tomatogirl (more linen, less reading) which all sound a lot nicer. But it’s also unclear why it is happening – why one Australian actor was photographed barefoot while also wearing a fleece, or why Ye was seen in a pair of “sand socks” during 28C heat.
Perhaps these early adopters were “grounding”, or perhaps, like my aunt, they prefer to drive without shoes on. From here, though, it looks like the podiatry equivalent of no-makeup selfies in all their “I’m just like you” pseudo-authenticity – and another opportunity for eagle-eyed marketers to sell us more stuff. It also, apparently, contributes to bunions.
Morwenna Ferrier is the Guardian’s fashion and lifestyle editor
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