What's considered 'hot' these days? It ain't what it used to be
I’m always alert to signs the world has passed me by, but the lens through which I view these signs has changed. What used to incite panic as I aged now brings a sense of relief.
To take one example, I’m forever grateful to have missed out on skinny jeans. Yes, bell-bottoms were stupid, but you didn’t have to take off your shoes to change into another pair of pants, which, when I was 15, was verification that I lived in the greatest country on earth.
Nor am I unhappy to have missed out on this business of crafting an image of yourself and putting it out there on TikTok. This is called, says The New York Times, the pursuit of being “hot.” Not what Paris Hilton would have considered hot, viz, physically beautiful, but almost the opposite: doing something plain and unremarkable and being pleased with yourself for doing it.
The Times notes: “These days, being hot no longer pertains only to your physical appearance, but includes how you move through the world and how you see yourself.”
OK, I get it. Actually, I don’t. Maybe the Times should explain further:
“Many of those pushing for a broader understanding of the term are also pushing back against the idea that you need to wait for confirmation from someone else before feeling justified in calling yourself hot. To them, hotness is a self-declaration, and that’s that. Hotness is no longer just in the eye of the beholder. It’s a mood. It’s a vibe.”
Maybe. But it also strikes me as one more delusion common to all generations. Like if I hear one more 20-something use the phrase “back in the day,” I’m going to pull my own head off. To you, kid, “back in the day” was last August.
Certainly I approve of any movement that doesn’t depend on the affirmation of others for one’s happiness. But I am somewhat dubious that any one individual, by judicial fiat, can declare herself a stunning success in a way that binds others to believe the same. And I am real-for-sure dubious that, despite what they say, these self-anointed hotties still care desperately what others think of them.
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The Times wrote of Emily Sundberg, a 28-year-old editor and filmmaker in Brooklyn, who “was eating spaghetti when she had a realization: She was being hot. There was nothing glamorous about it. It was just a solo weeknight dinner at the kitchen counter, and Ms. Sundberg was wearing workout clothes and glasses. But she felt moved to make a video of herself … (and) posted the seven-second video to Instagram Stories.”
This is really tree-falls-in-the-forest stuff, but if you post to Instagram Stories, isn’t this a direct admission that you really do care what people think?
I mean, yesterday I was pulling weeds in my corn patch. So? I was pleased with myself, but had no desire to share with the world my weed-pulling prowess. I could have been the Tom Brady of weed pullers, but I didn’t care whether other people knew it or not.
By the Times’ definition, hotness is like one of those bosons that disappear when viewed by the human eye: If you tell everyone you’re being hot you are no longer being hot.
Like my dad would say about his chronic headaches, “How do you know I’m suffering in silence if I don’t tell you how bad it hurts?”
And we’ve been down this road before, except in the 1970s you didn’t strive to be hot, you strived to be cool.
And my generation will back me up, but the most uncool thing you could do was TRY to be cool. We didn’t have Instagram Stories, obviously, but posting to social media would have been an instant coolness disqualification because it would have shown that you cared.
It was all terribly complicated, but it doesn’t matter because I don’t care. Now that’s hot.
Tim Rowland is a Herald-Mail columnist.
This article originally appeared on The Herald-Mail: TikTok has created a new, but puzzling definition of 'hot'
