You’re resting on the cusp between spring and summer. The lines are growing thin between the responsibilities of today and the freedom of tomorrow. The summer is yours for the taking – but there’s a catch. It’s insidious and loud, confident and certain. It’s a whisper at first, and then a clamour of conditions. You initially strain to hear it, and then you cannot get away; all the ladies out there, listen up! Listen up! It’s your time to shine with a summer glow up!
“The weight stigma attached to the summer glow up is implicit; there is only one acceptable body type in which you may enjoy your summer, and you don’t need me to detail the specifics of what that looks like.”
The crux of the idea of a summer glow up is toxic and harmful. Sounds harsh, I know, but so is determining your right to exist during a certain season according to your body weight. The weight stigma attached to the summer glow up is implicit; there is only one acceptable body type in which you may enjoy your summer, and you don’t need me to detail the specifics of what that looks like. We all understand it without a word being uttered, and perhaps that is the saddest part.
Summer glow up guides are essentially quack bibles for health and happiness. In order to be worthy of taking up space this season, we are led to believe that we need to whip our bodies into shape with dieting and gym routines. If you are to be worthy of the summer, you need to change. You need to be that girl. In essence, you need to be anyone but yourself.
“You can be fairly certain that someone is profiting from this commodification of your body, and you can be absolutely certain that that person is not you.”
Glow up guides may mention changing your mindset by shifting your focus onto yourself and your goals in order to increase your self-confidence and achieve your dreams. In reality, however, the mindset promoted centres less on introspective mindfulness and more on obsessive calorie counting. What makes it all the more dangerous is that glow up guides are not based upon any solid biological foundation. Juice ‘detoxes’ are actually bad for your health and metabolism according to dietetics. But if that girl on TikTok says otherwise, there will be countless other girls and women who will naively follow what is supposedly sage advice and attempt to manipulate their bodies, motivated by the erroneous belief that doing so is not only good for them, but necessary. The icing on the cake is the product endorsement sprinkled throughout your new bible from which the content creator will monetarily benefit. You can be fairly certain that someone is profiting from this commodification of your body, and you can be absolutely certain that that person is not you.
The beating heart of the summer glow up narrative is the implicit message that your body is a malleable, contortable entity that can be shaped into a size worthy not only of vitamin D but also of society’s approval, if only you have the self-discipline and strength to do what’s necessary to get there. But that is not how our bodies work. Glow ups speak of self-criticism and self-hatred when summer itself is supposed to sing of freedom, to whisper of long nights, to boast of bright days, to complain of humidity. Instead of focusing on all that our bodies can do for us throughout the summer, we are reaming off lists of the aesthetic standards which our bodies fail to live up to while allowing us to literally live. Our bodies carry us as we work long shifts, and are then our constant homes when we go travelling with the money we’ve earned. They keep us afloat as we swim in the sea at noon and move to the music as we dance at midnight. Yet throughout these journeys, all we see are shortcomings. All we do is vow, vehemently, to change. Glow up guides veil this toxicity by suggesting that this transformation is the path to increased self-confidence and happiness, improved mental health, and a better life in general. But the real repercussions are only negative, and in the most extreme cases, detrimental.
A summer body is not granted by a week of ingesting only juices and running like a hamster trapped on a treadmill. A summer body is your body, as it is, in the summer. Our bodies are not deciduous trees supposed to shed and bloom as the seasons change. They are evergreen, and should be allowed to take their natural form all year round, regardless of the season. If you attempt to feel your best according to glow up logic, you will render yourself a brittle branch, liable to snap at the faintest suggestion of a breeze. The standards that ‘that girl’ has set for this summer are elusive, ill-defined and fickle. You may end up missing out on the best part of the year. Or the consequences may be far more sinister.
“The suggestion that contortion confers confidence is a fallacy – you cannot hate your way to a body that you love.”
No greater enjoyment of high summer will come if you are a few kilos lighter – those few kilos will never be enough.
The suggestion that contortion confers confidence is a fallacy – you cannot hate your way to a body that you love.
Your diet and your size cannot be moralised – they neither make you a good person nor bad.
For what is going to make you feel full, if not food? If not self-compassion? Self-care? Self-love? What follows when you are left empty having denied yourself these things in the tragic belief that it is what you deserve?
Being on the beach in a bikini is exposing. So is openly admitting that we aspire towards shallow beauty standards. You should, however, allow yourself to be vulnerable to both. Doing so is liberating. It’s the first step towards freedom. And freedom is something that we all deserve, whether we’re skinny in the summer, or not.
