George discovers that the Yankees have given him a three-month severance package in the last episode of season eight of “Seinfeld.” He declares that he will live the next three months to the fullest, reading a book “from beginning to end. In that order.” He will also play Frisbee golf. “This is gonna be my time,” he declares. “Time to taste the fruits and let the juices drip down my chin. I proclaim this: the Summer of George!”
Setting intentions for summer is the low-stress, seasonal version of a New Year’s resolution. Summer is, or so we imagine, a blank canvas for aspiration. Unlike its punishing correlative (see: “the winter of our discontent”), summer contains the causes and conditions for living footloose and frivolously. Megan Thee Stallion ushered in the notion of the “Hot Girl Summer” with her 2019 song, which led to the hopeful but mostly unrealized “hot vax summer” of 2021. Sometimes a marketing campaign manages to appropriate naming rights — remember the summer of the Aperol spritz?
“Call it a collision between micro-trends and Mother Nature,” my colleague Callie Holtermann writes in The Times today of efforts to brand the season. Any eccentric pattern can become a designation: “‘Sharknado,’ Cronut … Is This the Summer of the Neolexic Portmanteau?” Slate asked in 2013. Hayley Phelan instructed Times readers on ways to make the summer of 2018 the summer of missing out, introducing the concept of JOMO (J for joy), FOMO’s “benevolent cousin.”
In branding summer, we relinquish some of the season’s intoxicating agency: Is it caftan summer? Then we know what we’re wearing. Margarita summer? There’s our drink order. My friend Natalie recently declared 2023 her “steamed shrimp drenched in Old Bay” summer. My friend Sarah claims she’s observing an “I’m not showering” summer. (I hope she’s kidding.)
I’m intrigued by the practice of historicizing our lives in real time, of giving our eras keywords and themes, containers in which to grow. Years as numbers seep into one another; branded eras maintain distinction. The more specific, the more memorable: This is the summer of taking the scenic route. Of swimming in lakes. The summer of dessert for dinner, the summer of saying “I’ll think about it.” The summer of thinking about it.
Why recruit a three-month period for branding? “For one, there’s the tantalizing possibility of calling it right,” Callie writes. But, as George found out after proclaiming the Summer of George, there’s also the danger of getting it wrong: His big plans go awry and he ends the summer in a hospital bed, lamenting the season that wasn’t. The lesson seems to be to keep your intentions manageable, and not to get too attached to the outcome.
What will this be the summer of for you? Tell me. Include your full name and location, and I might include your response in a future edition of The Morning.
THE WEEK IN CULTURE
CULTURE…
2023-06-03 06:01:17
Post from www.nytimes.com
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