Let's Stop Surrounding Everything Around Being 'Hot'

By Esme Carty

Hot girl walk. Hot girls read. Hot girls for Zohran. Why are we continuing to centralize women’s looks as their most important trait? Some might say, don’t take it so seriously! It’s just a bit of fun! However, I do not think that the message is meant to come across as tongue in cheek, I do genuinely think people are motivated or relieved when they find out what they are doing or who they are is considered attractive or going to make them more attractive.

The Hot Girl Walk® is a literal brand now. What started as a trend during the 2020 pandemic by a college student by the name of Mia Lind, has transformed into a “global cultural movement”—according to the Hot Girl Walk website—which is promised to create confidence, community, and female empowerment. On their website they list the three things you are meant to focus on on your 3-4 mile walk:

• What you’re grateful for

• Your goals and how you’re going to achieve them

• How hot you are! (aka Confidence)

Obviously the first two are great, and the sentiment of focusing on your confidence is excellent too. The problem is confidence is boiled down to just how you look as a woman (or girl, according to the brand, which is another problem in of itself). Here is the definition of confidence according to Merriam-Webster: “a feeling or consciousness of one's powers or of reliance on one's circumstances.” So, according to HGW®, a woman’s power is boiled down to her level of attractiveness and how much she can get out of life simply because she is considered attractive by societal standards. The ‘movement’ could’ve easily been labelled Goal Setting Walk, Empowering Walk, Confidence Building Walk, etc. but the constant need to focus on your physical looks and how you are perceived by the world around you is exhausting.

If you are online enough, you may have also seen the controversy surrounding a business owner trying to trademark “Hot Girls Read.” WHAT! Why do we have to be hot to read? Why do women have to be marketed as girls in order to sound more fun and fresh? Young girls read and women read, none of it has to do with physicality. Reading doesn’t make you hot, nor should that be a motivating factor to pick up a book. Reading makes you curious. Reading makes you intelligent. Reading makes you open to whimsy. Reading makes you open-minded. These are all incredible reasons to read. Or maybe reading is just a way you pass your time, no rhyme or reason to it.

Don’t even get me started on “Hot girls vote for [insert male politician here]”. It is so demeaning to hear political campaigns that think the only reason women will vote is because it’ll make them ‘hot.’ Not to be dramatic, but how dare you? Women did not get the right to vote in the United States until 1920—after a 72 year campaign for women’s rights, mind you. Girls don’t vote because it makes them hot. Women vote because we need to see change in this world in order to feel that we get as many opportunities as men do just by existing.

I’m all about female empowerment, hence the frustration with the ‘hot girl’ movement. It is so tiring to feel that women will only be heard or seen if they are attractive, and even then women still have to demand respect because they’re not just ‘a pretty face.’ Women deserve to be taken seriously. I don’t want to live in a world where girls grow up thinking the most powerful women, according to social media, are any celebrity with a makeup brand. Big up female entrepreneurs, of course, but also big up the women who are poets, scientists, doctors, activists, lawyers, caretakers, artists, designers, builders, the list goes on for miles. You can spend your time reading, walking, educating yourself on who to vote for without it being centralized on how you look. Confidence has nothing to do with ‘being pretty’, it has everything to do with the power within you and feeling capable because of that inherent power. Here’s the question to ask yourself, what do I do as a woman that makes me feel powerful?