Is a newsletter about being hot hot?

Dear friends, followers, and lovers,

On the eve of my twenty-eighth birthday, I felt the hottest I have ever felt. I was about to co-host a party with a group of friends, both old and new. In preparation for the party, I received a diabolical number of liquor bottles from various friends. I bought a cute little crop top for the festivities and it paired perfectly with my favourite “party” blazer. Argentina was about to beat France in the World Cup (but I didn’t know that yet). During the party itself, I rode that high—we had a disco ball, which we kept turning with the combined effort of rotating groups of people carrying me up to initiate new spin cycles (note to self: a mechanized disco ball might be “hotter”); we had a chocolate bar the size of my torso; we had sexy little cocktails in beautiful punch bowls; my friends were all mingling and dancing; I had cake smashed into my face while everyone sang to me and my co-host; I wore a tiara. I felt like I controlled the heavens. Over the course of that party, I was asked what I hoped for in this new lap around the sun. Intoxicated by the prospect of making the night go on forever, I answered honestly, “I want to be hot”. 

I don’t usually “feel hot.” I usually see myself in adjectives such as “cute”, “fun”, “whimsical”, and, most concerningly, “wholesome”. When I dress up, I can feel “beautiful”, sometimes “powerful”, but rarely “hot.” I felt proud, for a long time, that I eschewed the conventions of “hot” femininity and pursued comfort. But that outlook on life is no longer giving me the same satisfaction. What might it be like, I wondered, to feel “hot”? I saw hotness all around me—my friends, high on the energy of the bar, expertly playing the role of wingwoman while also chatting up their own interests, dazzling women with regimented columns of earrings flirting with baristas or bartenders, and so much pastel-coloured lycra in coffee shops clutching iced coffees with crystalline nails—and I felt like I couldn’t measure up. I felt clumsy, shabby, and out of “the know”.

Inspired by my realization, I embarked on my first-ever “Hot Girl Summer”, an experiment in dating and self-realization. I bought my first crop tops, a beautiful spaghetti-strapped summer dress, and a couple of biking shorts. I started to be less rueful about how much I enjoyed the gym, and even began making jokes about myself as an “EQX-girlie”. I started going on dates—a lot of them—with a wider array of people, to varying degrees of success. I made up crushes. I paraded around the Upper East Side wearing leggings and smaller t-shirts. I got one-and-a-half facials and started a “skincare routine”. I started wearing glitter on days when I felt sad, and then slowly built that practice into most of my days.

On the first cold day of the fall (September 14, 2022), I declared Hot Girl Summer to be over and transitioned to “Fall Soup Goblin Mode”, citing the unsustainability of "being hot”. What I didn’t realize is that being “Hot” is a mindset (a “lifestyle” some might say) and to assert that I could stop my pursuit of Hotness just as I was gaining momentum missed the bigger picture. Though I claimed to be a soup goblin, I didn’t make that much soup. As New York City temperatures dipped, I didn’t stay home in the warmth—I ventured out and sought hotness. I still do. Now aware of the value of longer-term exploration, my headline resolution for 2023, therefore, is to embark on a year-long pursuit of unapologetic hotness.

Writing a newsletter about how to be hot is likely “not very hot”, but I hope to fill an important gap in our understanding of Hotness. The literature on the internet about Hotness is overwhelmingly focused on physical traits—ratios, shapes, lengths—and unsurprisingly almost always celebrates trends and styles that reinforce racist, sexist, and ableist social structures. I’m on a quest for the more ephemeral sources of Hotness, which are often represented in shorthand as “confidence”, “attitude” or “being a baddie.” I’m not looking to “glow up” as a result of external procedures—any “maxxing” needs to come as the result of a holistic mindset shift, or new “vibes”. The purpose of this newsletter is to accumulate my findings on what it means to be Hot—when I find something or someone that is “unapologetically hot”, I’ll bring it into this space to dissect. What makes that person or action hot? What can we learn from this Moment of Hotness? As this data comes together, we’ll start to draw out patterns and connections, and perhaps begin to formulate a comprehensive Theory of Hotness. Through this work, I hope to build on this seminal text in Hot Studies. If you know of any other important literature on hotness, please share.

Thank you for joining me on this journey. If you’re reading these dispatches, you are also, in a way, on a journey of hotness. I’d love to learn from what you’re seeing in your own pursuits—please don’t hesitate to reach out with ideas, suggestions, observations, challenges, and questions. And please forward this newsletter to someone you think is Hot but you know they don’t know it.

Unapologetically yours (and hot),
Dominique