Your Body Was Never Meant to Be an Assignment
Every year around this time, something happens. The weather gets warmer, everybody starts booking trips and somehow our brains receive the exact same push notification: Hot girl summer loading, and with that, the annual renovation project begins.
The summer Pilates challenge, morning walks, high protein recipes, lemon water, magnesium glycinate, cortisol education reels. Entire Sunday afternoons dedicated to researching the optimal way to become the most glowing, toned, sculpted version of ourselves by June. We track our steps, our sleep, our cycle, our water intake, our protein intake and our resting heart rate. We know exactly how many grams of protein are in a bowl of cottage cheese but couldn't tell you the last time we spent an entire afternoon at the beach without thinking about how we looked while we were there. Somewhere between wellness culture, self improvement and productivity brain rot, our bodies quietly became projects.
Things to improve, upgrade, refine, perfect.
Even the language feels strangely exhausting. Tightening. Sculpting. Toning. Fixing. Snatching. As if we're all tiny luxury apartments undergoing renovation before summer leasing season begins.
Of course, wanting to feel beautiful is hardly the issue. Summer practically encourages it. It's tiny dresses and salty hair. Late sunsets and rooftop parties. Ocean swims. Holiday romances. Accidentally making eye contact with someone across a restaurant terrace and thinking about it for the next two days. After months of coats and grey skies, summer arrives and suddenly we're aware of ourselves again.
Sometimes I wonder how many beautiful moments we've accidentally missed because we were too busy evaluating ourselves inside them. How many beach days became photo shoots. How many sunsets became opportunities for content. We're constantly trading the experience for the documentation of the experience.
And maybe that's what feels so strange about summer now. Because it arrives with all the same ingredients. The late sunsets. The warm skin. The ocean. The flirting. The feeling that life is happening slightly closer to the surface. Yet we're often standing a few steps away from it all, observing ourselves instead of fully disappearing into the moment. Sometimes I think about the way we used to experience summer before we became aware of ourselves. Before beach days involved camera rolls with 400 photos. Before everybody knew their angles. Before we started seeing ourselves from the outside. There was a time when an entire afternoon could disappear without documentation. Five hours in the water, sunburnt shoulders and ice cream, somehow sand is ending up absolutely everywhere. Nobody was thinking about creating a memory. We were too busy having one.
Imagine meeting the twelve year old version of yourself at the beach. She wouldn't care about angles or tan lines or whether somebody took a flattering photo. She'd already be collecting shells and staying outside until the sky turned pink. Coming home completely exhausted. There was something beautiful about that version of summer.
Summer itself remains completely indifferent. The ocean does not care about our waistline. A sunset has never once asked for clear skin. Our bodies were never meant to become endless improvement projects. They were supposed to carry us through heatwaves, spontaneous nights out, ocean swims, dancing until sunrise, flirting, heartbreak, friendship and all the strange little moments that eventually become our favourite stories. The whole point was never to become our best selves by June. Simply have a summer worth remembering.
.
by Lareen Roth
PHOTOGRAPHY by Pinterest / kyliejenner / haileybieber ig