Why Does Every Summer Need to Be the Summer ‘of' Something?

New York Times

3 days ago

On March 26, 2021, Chet Hanks, the son of Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson, turned his phone camera on himself to make a surprisingly influential declaration: It was the beginning of 'white boy summer.' Not a Donald Trump- or NASCAR-adjacent brand of whiteness, he clarified. His reference points were singers like Jon B. and Jack Harlow: He pictured hot months filled with tank tops, tattoos and attempts to get invited to the proverbial cookout.
This did not materialize, but Hanks's phrase stuck; it is still used constantly. When Tom Hardy appeared at this year's Met Gala in what looked like a durag, one popular tweet called it a harbinger of 'six more weeks of white boy summer.' Hanks has to issue periodic statements defending the idea from use by supremacist groups. More than anything, the meme solidified a lasting cultural practice: Every summer, the internet must come to a consensus on what that summer is all about.
Hanks was not the first to brand the season. For one thing, all modern efforts sit in the vast shadow of 1967's Summer of Love. For another, 'white boy summer' was preceded by 2019's 'Hot Girl Summer,' which was both a Megan Thee Stallion song and a catchphrase people used to justify everything from sleeping around to eating tinned fish. The years since have featured a summer themed around a 'Minions' movie (2022); the summer of 'Barbenheimer' (2023); and the blockbuster 'brat summer' of 2024, in which a Charli XCX album and its distinctive, apple-green cover so dominated internet discourse that the 'brat' theme was briefly taken up by Kamala Harris's presidential campaign. (As the young Democratic activist David Hogg told followers online, 'Nancy Pelosi has been informed of the meaning of Brat.')
What about this year? In April, Charli XCX took the stage at the Coachella festival and proposed some fresh options, which flashed on screens behind her. Almost all involved film auteurs with 2025 releases: Ari Aster summer, David Cronenberg summer, the summers of Celine Song or Joachim Trier or Darren Aronofsky. These propositions did get some traction; Elle Fanning was later spotted in a 'Joachim Trier Summer' T-shirt. But unsettling work like Cronenberg's doesn't exactly have mass-market viral potential. As someone quipped on X: '[Gets arrested for opening an unlicensed gynecology practice] This was supposed to be the summer of Cronenberg :('
Since spring, I have encountered nominations for Vampire Weekend summer, slop summer, rat summer, creek girl summer and #bootsonlysummer, a fashion trend involving soccer cleats. A friend who left X for Bluesky noticed a lack of summer discourse on the newer platform and made a halfhearted attempt to start 'Bob Seger summer'; I was one of only nine likers. By June, the branding of summer 2025 still seemed as muddled as this April post on X: 'I have got to have a white lotus lorde Addison hot yoga all adventurous women do Kendall Roy sunrise on the reaping Joan Baez summer.'
Brands are always, always riding shotgun for summer phenomena, or at least trying to ride in their wake.
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