I read yet another roundup of summer trends last week with narrowed eyes and my traditional wasp-chewing expression of disapproval. We are supposed, apparently, to greet this year’s “wet, brat, hot rat summer” with gladiator mullets, Nigella’s sgroppino gelato and “boat raves”; we should be monetising our feet and chopping wood. I hope you are taking notes.
What gave me wasp-face (surely ripe for inclusion in a summer trend listicle, along with my other key seasonal trends, this and every year: underboob sweat, climate dread, toenail shame and excess salt consumption)? It’s not the list itself I take issue with, except the inclusion of boats, which are hateful. It’s the idea that July and August are so special that we need instructions to ensure we are doing them right.
No one tells you how to do February or March properly, do they? Other seasons don’t have a theme (love, hotness or tomatoes) and a colour (brat green for 2024, naturally) as if they were a Pinterest wedding. Other seasons don’t need their own book – sorry, “beach read” (Miranda July’s All Fours or David Nicholls’ You Are Here this year) – or song (Sabrina Carpenter’s Espresso). Christmas reuses the same songs every year, and it doesn’t make a fuss about it.
I recognise that other seasons can be insufferable. The “crisp leaves, new notebooks and sharpened pencils” people are already planting pumpkins to turn into spiced lattes and checking their black opaques for ladders. But summer is so extra, so exhaustingly exuberant. People don’t start proclaiming that this is going to be “the best spring ever!” or singing about winter lovin’.
Worse still, it looks as if summer is starting a hostile takeover of other seasons’ stuff, if the recent New York Times report on the rise of “summerween” is anything to go by: this social media-concocted frankenfestival reportedly involves “carving watermelons” and “spooky beach towels” (and they don’t mean scratchy and mildewed).
I’m calling it: it’s time for summer to wind its neck in. Just calm down – you aren’t that special. And actually, summer (apologies, aestival people), you’re already nearly over.
• Emma Beddington is a Guardian columnist
