By: Jy Hung Ong
This summer, three pop-sensational women, Beyonce Knowles-Carter, Greta Gerwig, and Taylor Swift, have come to create what is known as #HotGirlSummer, also known as #BillionGirlSummer.
The film Barbie, directed by Greta Gerwig, is already the first woman-directed movie to gross more than a billion dollars. By the end of Beyonce and Taylor Swift’s worlds tours, each tour is expected to gross similarly ridiculous amounts. Both tours are already boosting their venues’ economies around the nation because Swifties (Taylor Swift fans) and Beyhives (Beyonce fans) need to buy airplane tickets, concert tickets, and hotel reservations to visit the concerts.
In the city of Los Angelos, for an entire week, Taylor Swift turned the metropolis into more of a cathedral — a massive crowd of hundreds of thousands. Soon, Beyonce will bring her “Rennaisance” tour to the same city for three nights. Across Los Angelos, cinemas are packed to the brim with women and men, ready to watch the thrilling adventures in Greta Gerwig’s Barbie.
However, at the scale of the nation, the looming Trump presidency and the catastrophic COVID pandemic have left many Americans with feelings of identity, pain, and reckoning. For many, movies and pop culture provide a sense of relief and resistance.
Gerwig, Knowles-Carter, and Swift have all created their own little fantasy worlds. To quote The New York Times, “Swift in her moss-covered cottage of Americana folklore turns stadiums into fireside chats for any romantic, Beyoncé's House of Chrome is a black queer club as a spaceship of alien superstars soaring above the fray – and Barbieland is a pastry inversion of the real-world's patriarchy: a Palm Springs-style fantasia where walls don't exist, convertibles are always top-down and Supreme Courts marginalize men for a change.”
The seasons change. This summer, like all summers, will come to an end. Winter is coming. However, the aftereffects that these three women have created on our world and local economies have led to a glorious summer outmatched by almost none.