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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
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Morwenna Ferrier

#BarefootBoySummer has arrived – but really it’s just another seasonal hashtag to sell us stuff

Rapper Megan Thee Stallion performs on stage
The ‘fixation with coining pithy three-word expressions to define cultural moments’ dates back to 2019 with Megan Thee Stallion’s Hot Girl Summer. Photograph: Broadimage/Shutterstock

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.

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